^         It)  -i 


'  •  -1^- 


^e^:(^6e^C^uJf^ 


jy 


"MONSIEUR  HENRI 

A  FOOT-NOTE  TO 
FRENCH  HISTORY  BY 
LOUISE    IMOGEN    GUINEY 


NEW   YORK    HARPER  &•   BROTHERS 
PRINTERS  i^  PUBLISHERS  MDCCCXCII 


Copyright,  1892,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 

All  righti  reurred. 


TO 

MADAME  MARIE-ANGE  BOXDROIT 
R.S.C.J. 

When  you  ivere  first  an  exile,  and  at  Elm- 
hurst,  I  was  a  child.  Six  studious  years  we 
had  together,  many  games,  a  tiff  or  two,  much 
silent  love.  It  is  because  I  do  not  forget  any 
of  them,  and  because  it  may  stand  as  a  little 
token  of  aft  honorable  and  lifelong  debt,  that  to 
you,  my  dear  old  friend,  without  asking  your 
leave,  I  dedicate  this  book. 


20901 7.'J 


"  I  have  looked  narrowly  into  this  war  of  La  Vendue, 
full  as  it  is  of  scenes  and  faces ;  I  have  thought  of  it 
by  day,  and  dreamed  of  it  by  night.  It  is  not  cold, 
commonplace  war,  waged  for  ambition  and  policy, 
nor  for  commercial  advantage  ;  it  is  a  war  deep- 
rooted  in  the  soil  and  in  the  conscience  of  man ;  a 
war  all  for  family  and  fatherland,  in  the  antique  im- 
passioned way ;  a  Homeric  war,  inspiring  dread  and 
admiration,  pity  and  love.  .  .  .  Ever\-thing  in  it  calls 
for  the  palette  and  the  lyre."— A  Republican  officer, 
quoted  by  Abbe  Deniau,  Histoire  de  la  Giierre  de 
la  Vefuiee. 

"And  mark  you,  undemonstrative  men  would  have 
spoiled  the  situation.  The  finest  action  is  the  better 
for  a  piece  of  purple." — Robert  Louis  Ste\^nson, 
in  The  English  Admirals. 


PREFACE. 

O  little  concerning  the 
French  provincial  struggle 
of  the  eighteenth  century- 
has  found  an  echo  in  our 
language,  that  the  British 
Museum  and  the  Bodleian  Library  have 
not  three  original  references  between 
them  to  add  to  the  local  archives  (most 
of  them,  alas !  still  confused  and  uncata- 
logued),  of  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale. 
Madame  de  La  Rochejaquelein's  beauti- 
ful Memoires  still  serve  as  the  basis  for 
whatever  may  be  said  on  the  subject; 
and  where  I  have  differed  from  her  by  a 
hair,  it  has  not  been  without  reluctance, 
and  the  comparison  of  many  oracles. 
I  do  not  plead  for  pardon  in  treating 


an  all-but-hallowed  theme  in  a  rather 
high-handed  fashion,  since  every  grain 
here  has  been  painfully  sifted  and  weigh- 
ed, and  the  material,  if  not  the  propor- 
tioning of  it,  is  true  as  truth.  But  in  so 
treating  it,  I  bore  in  mind  that  excision 
is  the  best  safeguard  against  decay,  that 
time  throws  away  as  rag  and  bobtail  the 
political  specifications  thought  to  be 
precious,  and  that  we  must  at  once,  and 
in  the  nobler  sense,  romanticize  such 
dry  facts  as  we  mean  shall  live. 

It  is  always  the  character  of  the  man 
which  vitalizes  the  event;  what  did  or 
did  not  happen  is,  ultimately,  of  minor 
importance  beside  the  spectacle  of  a 
strong  soul.  A  background  may  be 
blurred  for  the  sake  of  a  single  figure. 
I  tried,  therefore,  to  paint  a  portrait, 
willing  to  abide  by  the  hard  saying  of 
Northcote :  "  If  a  portrait  have  force,  it 
will  do  for  history." 

To  the  Rev.  Walter  Elliott,  editor  of 


The  Catholic  World,  who  allows  me  thus 
to  incorporate  and  remodel  a  sketch 
first  contributed  to  its  pages ;  to  Mon- 
sieur le  Cure  and  Monsieur  le  Vicaire  of 
Saint-Aubin-de-Baubigne,  who,  for  the 
sake  of  the  immortal  Red  Handkerchief 
unknown  to  English  literature,  bright- 
ened my  frosty  travels  in  the  old  Bo- 
cage  ;  to  Madame  la  Comtesse  de  Chabot 
of  Boissiere  ;  to  Mademoiselle  de  Chabot, 
Henri's  young  kinswoman  and  annalist, 
whose  ardent  researches  have  verified 
many  of  the  data  I  give,  and  to  Monsieur 
de  Chabot,  also,  who  drew  for  his  sister's 
soldierly  book  the  admirable  chart  now 
kindly  lent  me  for  transmarine  use,  I  re- 
turn, this  late,  my  faithful  and  ever  affec- 
tionate thanks.  L.  I,  G. 

London,  iSgi. 


f 


"MONSIEUR   HENRI": 

A  FOOT-NOTE  TO  FRENCH   HISTORY. 


I E FORE  a  crowd  of  excited 
farmers,  a  young  French- 
man, blond,  enthusiastic, 
delicately  -  nurtured,  made 
once  this  singular  oration : 
"  Friends !  if  my  father  were  here,  you 
would  have  confidence.  As  for  me,  I  am 
only  a  boy,  but  I  will  prove  that  I  deserve 
to  lead  you.  When  I  advance,  do  you 
follow  me  ;  when  I  flinch,  cut  me  down  ; 
when  I  fall,  avenge  me !"  Then  amid  the 
cheers  and  tears  of  peasants,  he  sat  in  the 
great  court -j^ard  of  his  father's  aban- 
doned house,  and  munched  with  them 
their  coarse  brown  loaves.      It  w^as  the 


first  slight  sign  of  his  consecration  to  a 
cause.  He  had  spoken  famous  words, 
hardly  to  be  matched  in  history ;  words 
which  have  travelled  far  and  wide,  and 
proclaimed  his  spirit  where  his  name  is 
utterly  unknown.  Yesterday  he  was  a 
carpet-knight;  now,  like  "gallant  Mur- 
ray "  in  the  song, 

"  His  gude  sword  he  hath  drawn  it, 
And  hath  flung  the  sheath  awa'." 

There  was  no  retrogression.  Henri  du 
Vergier  de  La  Rochejaquelein,  twenty 
years  old,  a  little  indolent  hitherto,  an 
athlete,  a  critic  of  horses  and  hounds, 
was  suddenly  shaken  out  of  his  velvet 
privacy  into  the  rude  lap  of  the  Revo- 
lution. 

He  was  born  in  the  village  of  Saint 
Aubin  de  Baubigne,  near  Chatillon-sur- 
Sevre,  in  the  broad-moated,  wood-sur- 
rounded feudal  castle  of  La  Durbelliere, 
on  the  thirtieth   of  August,  1772.     He 


came  of  fighting  stock.  Among  the  an- 
cestors of  his  name  there  were  Crusad- 
ers, two  warriors  slain  under  Francis  I. 
at  Pavia,  and  a  dear  brother-in-arms  of 
Henry  of  Navarre,  who  was  wounded 
beside  him  on  the  battle-field  of  Arques. 
Henri's  father,  the  Marquis  Henri-Louis- 
Auguste,  died  of  the  opening  of  an  old 
scar  in  1802,  after  able  service  in  San  Do- 
mingo, where  he  was  defeated,  with  his 
English  allies,  by  the  blacks  and  the  forces 
of  Spain  ;  his  wife,  a  proprietress  there, 
described  in  the  parish  books  at  home 
as  "  the  high  and  powerful  lady  Con- 
stance-Lucie-Bonne  de  Caumont  Dade," 
was  destined  to  survive  her  son  also,  but 
not  long.  They  were  the  parents  of  two 
other  sons  and  of  four  daughters,  of  all 
of  whom  it  is  perfect  eulogy  to  say  that 
they  were  alike.  Henri,  the  second  child 
and  eldest  boy,  was  intended  for  the 
military  profession :  while  the  supreme 
political  storm  was  brewing  he  was  com- 


pleting  his  studies  at  Soreze.  This  fa- 
mous school  in  Lower  Languedoc  was 
just  then,  under  the  benignant  rule  of 
Dom  Despaulx,  in  its  prime.  In  the 
great  plain  under  the  shadow  of  Pepin's 
Tower,  the  Benedictines  could  marshal 
their  four  hundred  boys,  in  blue  uni- 
forms faced  with  red.  Henri  was  prob- 
ably something  less  than  an  enthusiast 
in  botany  and  dancing  (for  all  the  arts 
had  excellent  show  at  Soreze),  but  gentle 
as  he  was,  he  had  no  disrelish  for  the 
novitiate  of  war.  He  must  have  appre- 
hended, even  at  the  still  college  where, 
long  after,  the  radical  Republican,  Pere 
Lacordaire,  set  his  bust  to  smile  down 
upon  the  bent  heads  of  the  study  hall, 
what  strange  transatlantic  winds  were 
already  blowing  over  France.  He  look- 
ed forward  always  to  a  campaign,  to 
spurs  and  sabres,  and  some  mighty  Jer- 
icho to  assail.  Courage  he  had  as  a 
birthright;    the    splendid    animal    non- 


chalance  in  face  of  clanger,  and,  later,  in 
a  measure  almost  as  ample,  the  forti- 
tude of  soul  which  "endures  and  is  pa- 
tient." He  went  directly  from  school  to 
Landrecy  in  1785,  joining  the  garrison 
as  sub -lieutenant,  his  first  commission 
being  in  the  Royal  Polish  regiment,  of 
which  his  father  was  then  colonel.  The 
marquis,  a  person  of  worth  and  fortune, 
had  every  reason  to  be  pleased  with  his 
pretty  cavalryman  of  thirteen,  who  had 
to  get  along  as  he  could,  without  public 
favors,  and  who  was  treated  with  com- 
plimentary strictness. 

Henri  became  one  of  the  constitutional 
guard  at  Versailles,  which  had  replaced 
the  household  body-guard  of  Louis  XVL, 
and  six  years  later,  when  this  was  dis- 
banded, he  remained  in  Paris,  by  order 
of  the  King.  His  lodgings  were  in  the 
Rue  Jacob.  On  Friday,  the  terrible  tenth 
of  August,  1792,  he  was  in  the  Tuileries, 
and  narrowly  escaped  with  his  life  ;  his 


companion,  Charles  D'Autichamp,  cross- 
ing the  bridge  over  the  Seine,  killed 
several  men  in  his  own  defence.  It  is 
likely  that  Henri  forced  his  way  on 
a  run  through  the  great  alley  of  the 
Champs  Elysees,  or  found  passage  at  the 
Queen's  garden -gate,  where  most  who 
ventured  were  struck  down  ;  for  he  was 
not  with  those  who  went  with  Choiseul, 
sword  in  hand,  on  that  ever-dramatic  day, 
to  join  their  master  under  the  protection 
of  the  Assembly.  Louis-Marie  de  Sal- 
gues,  the  young  Marquis  of  Lescure,  a 
cousin  of  the  La  Rochejaqueleins,  reach- 
ed Tours  safely  with  his  wife,  along  a 
road  marshalled  with  forty  thousand 
hostile  troops;  he  owed  his  escape  to 
the  romantic  gratitude  of  Thomassin, 
Parisian  commissary  of  police,  whose 
pupil  he  had  been.  Haggard,  wearied, 
wrought  to  the  pitch  of  anxiety,  they  fled 
unawares  into  the  heart  of  revolt  and  dis- 
turbance.    La  Durbelliere  was  deserted ; 


the  family  of  La  Rochejaqueleiii  had  emi- 
grated, during  the  preceding  December, 
to  Germany ;  the  parish  had  gone  over  to 
the  will  of  the  majority.  Lescure,  shel- 
tered at  his  chateau  of  Clisson,  in  Bois- 
me,  Poitou,  sent  for  his  homeless  kins- 
man. Thither,  evading  a  series  of  perils, 
Henri  went,  stepping  in  among  a  strange 
huddled  group  of  royalists :  men  of  re- 
sources, like  Bernard  de  Marigny,  with 
his  large  joyousness  of  nature  ;  men  like 
the  giddy,  whimpering  old  Chevalier  de 
La  Cassaigne,  who  got  the  whole  house 
into  trouble  by  his  ofhciousness,  and 
whose  name  is  often  indulgently  replaced 
by  a  blank ;  aristocrats,  abbesses,  nota- 
ries, old  tutors,  servants,  distant  rela- 
tives, and  proscribed  children,  keeping 
vigil  over  the  dying  hopes  of  conser\'a- 
tive  France.  Few  rumors  reached  them 
of  the  fighting  in  Anjou  ;  they  ventured 
out  into  the  roads  but  seldom,  as  the 
doors   were   jealously    watched.     They 


were  of  one  heart  and  mind,  undergoing 
agonies  of  suspense,  and  anon  cheering 
one  another  with  fireside  tales,  with  in- 
door games  and  music.  Marigny,  the 
kind  giant  of  a  cousin,  with  his  maskings 
and  recitations,  his  mimicry  of  divers 
ages,  conditions,  and  dialects,  kept  them 
alive  with  laughter.  But  Henri  was  the 
true  centre  of  interest ;  all  relied  upon 
him,  quiet  and  reserved  as  he  was  ;  from 
first  to  last  he  somehow  made  a  moral 
brightness  in  the  sombre  lapses  of  those 
days.  He  was  no  courtier ;  "  he  had 
lived,"  says  the  woman  then  Lescure's 
bride,  "but  little  in  the  world."  Here, 
through  her,  we  have  the  earliest  glimpse 
of  his  tall  and  comely  figure,  of  his 
wheaten-yellow  hair,  his  healthful  color, 
his  animated  eyes,  "  his  contour  English 
rather  than  French." 

Like  a  thunder-clap  came  the  news  of 
the  King's  death.  It  had  been  provided 
that  word  should  be  sent  to  Clisson  of 


any  impending  rescue.  Not  a  hand  worth 
counting  had  been  raised  to  save  him. 
Lescure  and  La  Rochejaquelein  looked 
at  each  other  in  profound  grief  and  dis- 
may ;  and  among  the  twenty-five  men  in 
the  chateau  capable  of  bearing  arms,  the 
spark  of  desperate  merriment  flickered 
out.  So  they  remained  for  months,  in 
the  midst  of  threats  growing  from  day 
to  day.  Madame  de  Lescure  was  learn- 
ing to  ride,  as  an  initiation  into  the  pos- 
sible life  before  her,  and  sat  trembling 
upon  the  saddle,  while  her  husband  and 
Henri  walked  on  either  side  over  the 
greensward,  supporting  her,  and  comfort- 
ing her  tears.  Henri  began  to  be  more 
moody  and  preoccupied,  saying  little. 
He  traversed  the  countr}'  alone,  often 
facing  and  surmounting  danger  with  his 
consummate  physical  skill,  sometimes 
hiding,  or  galloping  madly  to  the  woods. 
On  one  occasion  gendarmes  made  a  de- 
scent on  Clisson,  and  carried  off  his  fa- 


vorite  horse.  They  told  Lescure  that 
"the  son  of  Monsieur  de  La  Rocheja- 
quelein  was  much  more  sharply  suspec- 
ted "  than  he  was.  "  I  do  not  see  why,'' 
Lescure  replied,  with  his  habitual  direct- 
ness; "we  are  relatives  and  fast  friends; 
our  opinions  are  quite  the  same." 

Citizens  were  summoned  to  the  de- 
fence of  Bressuire.  Lescure  had  been 
for  four  years  back  commandant  of  his 
parish  of  Boisme.  Hourly  he  expected 
his  orders  to  march  against  his  insurgent 
neighbors :  there  seemed  no  way  out  of 
it.  The  men  were  holding  a  council  of 
debate,  determined,  at  least,  to  make  a 
passive  resistance  when,  early  in  April, 
the  name  of  La  Rochejaquelein  was  call- 
ed to  be  drawn  for  the  militia.  On  the 
track  of  this  announcement  followed  a 
secret  message,  brought  by  a  young  peas- 
ant named  Morin,  from  Henri's  unmar- 
ried aunt,  living  in  retirement  some  miles 
away.    Chollet  had  been  taken ;  the  peo- 


pie  had  arisen ;  there  were  wild  hopes 
that  the  royalist  faction  might  get  the 
upperhand.  The  young  peasant,  eager 
and  breathless,  fixed  his  glance  upon 
Henri.  He  spoke  persuasively,  with  a 
fervor  that  seemed  to  thrill  his  whole 
body.  "  Sir,  will  you  draw  to-morrow 
for  the  militia,  when  your  farmers  are 
about  to  fight  rather  than  be  drafted  ? 
Come  with  us  !  The  whole  country-side 
looks  to  you  ;  it  will  obey  you."  "  God 
wills  it,"  cried  Peter  the  Hermit.  He 
willed  that  God  should  will  it,  at  any 
rate,  and  all  Christendom  took  him  at 
his  word.  The  peasant  boy  had  some 
spell  beside  eloquence,  for  Henri's  think- 
ing was  over.  "  Tell  them  that  I  will 
come,"  he  answered.  That  night,  ac- 
companied by  one  servant,  a  guide,  and 
the  tremulous  Chevalier,  afraid  to  stand 
his  chances  at  Clisson,  provided  with  a 
brace  of  pistols  and  carrying  a  stick, 
Henri    mounted   his    horse    and   waved 


farewell.  There  were  protestations,  ar- 
guments, women's  prayers  and  tears ;  but 
he  silently  tightened  his  belt  upon  his 
pistols,  and  threw  himself,  at  parting, 
into  Lescure's  arms.  "  Then  first  came 
the  eagle-look  into  his  eyes  "  (says  the 
gentle  historian  of  La  Vendee),  "  which 
never  left  them  after." 

Machecould,  the  Herbiers,  and  Chan- 
tonnay  had  already  been  seized  by  the 
insurgents,  when  Henri,  racing  across 
country  to  evade  the  Blues,  reached  the 
little  army  on  the  morrow  of  a  nearly 
fatal  victory  at  Chemille,  whose  fruits 
had  to  be  abandoned  for  lack  of  ammu- 
nition. He  turned  about  and  made  an- 
other painful  journey  to  Mademoiselle 
Anne-Henriette  de  La  Rochejaquelein; 
and  passed  Easter  there  with  her  in  the 
roomy  house  of  charity  at  Saint  Aubin, 
Le  Rabot,  which  she  had  built  in  1785; 
then,  with  a  few  young  men,  he  hur- 
ried to  the  rebels'  quarters  at  TifTanges, 


whither  they  had  withdrawn.  Stofflet, 
Bonchamp,  D'Elbee,  even  Cathehneau, 
were  disheartened;  they  had  now  but 
two  pounds  of  powder ;  the  shabby  reg- 
iments were  disbanding.  Henri  went 
bacl<,  brooding  and  restive,  to  Saint  Au- 
bin.  It  seemed  as  if  opportunity,  after 
all,  had  failed  him.  But  the  peasants 
found  him,  calling  upon  him  as  "  Mon- 
sieur Henri !"  a  plain  name  which  is  his- 
toric now,  and  promising  that  in  the 
course  of  a  day  a  force  -of  ten  thousand 
men  should  join  him.  He  urged  them 
to  gather  at  once  by  night,  armed  only, 
alas  !  with  their  cudgels,  spits,  haj^-forks, 
scythes,  and  spades.  They  came  in  droves 
to  the  castle  at  Saint  Aubin  from  Nueil, 
Rorthais,  Echaubrognes,  the  Cerqueux, 
Saint  Clementin,  Voultegon,  Somloire, 
Etusson,  Izernay.  Ouetineau's  trained  di- 
vision, three' thousand  strong,  was  before 
them.  They  had  but  two  hundred  mus- 
kets and  sixty  pounds  of  blasting  powder, 


which  Henri  had  discovered  in  a  mason's 
cellar.  At  dawn  he  took  command,  with 
the  alarum  on  his  lips.  His  gayety  had 
come  back  ;  he  had  found  his  post.  What 
he  had  to  say  fired  itself  in  an  epigram. 
He  was  a  little  pale,  but  very  earnest,  and 
his  beautiful  presence  was  another  thous- 
and men.  He  was  only  a  boy,  he  said ; 
but  if  he  flinched  they  might,  at  least, 
cut  him  down ;  if  he  fell  in  battle,  they 
would,  at  best,  avenge  him.  And  they 
stormed  up  together  against  the  Au- 
biers  on  the  seventeenth  of  April,  1793, 
as  if  in  the  first  bustling  act  of  a  bright 
drama. 


f 


HIS  side-show  of  the  great 
Revolution  was  a  magnifi- 
cent spectacle,  and  unique 
in  the  world's  annals.  The 
seat  of  war,  Vendee  mili- 
taire,  may  be  described  roughly  as  being 
bounded  on  the  north  by  the  Loire  from 
Saumur  to  the  sea ;  on  the  west  by  the 
Atlantic ;  on  the  south  by  a  line  drawn 
from  Sables  d'Olonne  across  to  Parthe- 
nay ;  and  on  the  east  by  another  line  from 
Parthenay  up  again  to  Saumur.  It  was 
then  comprised  in  some  square  leagues 
of  old  Anjou,  Poitou,  and  Nantes ;  it  is 
now  divided  into  the  four  modern  de- 
partments of  Loire-Inferieure,  Maine-et- 
Loire,  Deux- Sevres,  and  Vendee,  The 
name  Vendee,  at  first,  indeed,  minor  and 


local,  rose  and  spread  after  the  affair  at 
Challans  on  the  twelfth  of  March,  until 
it  became  representative  of  the  people 
and  their  cause.  And  Vendee,  once  men- 
tioned, means  two  things  :  the  Marais,  or 
low  sea-coast  district,  a  great  meadow 
honey-combed  with  canals  from  the  isl- 
and of  Bouin  to  Saint-Hilairie-de-Rie; 
and  the  inland  Bocage,  or  thicket,  in  its 
own  way  quite  as  inaccessible.  The  lat- 
ter, the  centre  of  agitation,  was  settled 
by  rugged,  simple,  honorable  folk.  It 
was  glossy  with  woods  of  golden  furze 
and  pollard  oaks,  and  broken  everywhere 
with  little  hollows  and  little  streams. 
It  was  a  rough  and  arid  place;  it  had 
few  roads,  and  these  were  clayey  and 
difficult;  it  was  full  of  rocky  pastures, 
hedge-rows,  and  trenches  ;  dull  in  color, 
crabbed  in  outline,  niggardly  of  distance. 
It  had  not  a  mountain  nor  any  consid- 
erable landmark  save  the  Hill  of  Larks. 
In  the  narrow  flats  it  was  all  but  impos- 


sible  for  the  enemy  to  form  ;  and  utterly 
impossible  for  one  detachment  to  com- 
municate with  another  by  signals.  The 
puzzling  Bocage  was  a  glorious  van- 
tage-ground, however,  for  its  own  sons. 
The  race  which  mastered  it  had  great 
agility  and  nerve :  Caesar  had  called 
them  invincible.  They  were  not  of  a 
volatile  humor,  as  were  their  compat- 
riots in  northern  France ;  and  yet  they 
moved  habitually  in  the  very  gravity 
and  temperance  of  cheerfulness.  The 
patriarchal  life  survived  among  them : 
the  noble  divided  the  proceeds  of 
the  land  with  his  farmers ;  and  he 
was  his  own  steward,  attending  per- 
sonally to  business,  and  having  for 
his  tenants  those  with  whom  he  had 
played  as  a  boy.  The  ladies'  carriages 
were  drawn  by  bullocks.  On  fete-days 
the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  hall 
danced  with  the  peasants.  After  the 
Sunday  services,  among  his  devout  flock 


the  good  curi  read  aloud  the  place  of 
meeting  for  the  week's  hunts.  There 
were  no  feuds ;  a  scandal  w^as  unheard 
of ;  a  lawsuit  was  a  twenty  years'  won- 
der. The  keys  of  the  jail  had  taken  to 
chronic  rust.  The  shut-in  Bocage  had 
seen  the  beginnings  of  the  national  up- 
heaval with  but  faint  concern.  Its  own 
clergy  were  poor,  its  own  gentry  mag- 
nanimous ;  its  liberties  were  entire ;  it 
had  no  great  public  abuses  calling  for 
reform.  And  through  the  outlying  dis- 
tricts things  were  much  the  same.  It 
was  impossible,  as  Jeffrey  wrote  soon 
after  in  the  Quarterly,  to  "revolution- 
ize "  a  people  so  circumstanced.  Inno- 
cent and  happy  as  they  were,  it  may  be 
said  of  them  that  they  had  no  history 
till  the  insurrection.  It  broke  out  in 
March  of  1793,  it  was  over  in  July  of 
1795  ;  and  those  on  its  soil  cannot  speak 
of  it  yet  without  a  throb  of  feeling. 
It  was  in  the  main,  a  religious  war; 


one  of  the  few  since  St.  Louis'  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  which  has  not  dis- 
graced the  name ;  and  the  latest,  in- 
deed, known  to  general  history.  But 
it  has  been  affirmed  too  often  that 
the  nobles  and  priests,  active  here  as 
elsewhere  for  the  losing  cause,  had 
roused  the  masses  to  revolt.  M.  Ber- 
thre  de  Bourniseaux,  of  Thouars,  a 
Republican,  says  earnestly,  that  defen- 
sive war  was  produced  by  three  causes, 
with  none  of  which  the  influence  of 
churchmen  and  kingsmen,  as  such,  had 
anything  to  do.  First,  by  the  execra- 
ble tyranny  of  the  Jacobins  in  worry- 
ing an  intensely  conservative  section, 
which,  in  the  proper  Jacobinical  jargon, 
was  not  "  ripe  "  for  the  Revolution  ;  sec- 
ond, by  the  foolish  persistent  persecu- 
tion of  their  old  faith  in  behalf  of 
the  goddess  Reason  —  a  thing  borne 
long  in  silence  and  bewilderment,  until 
the  smouldering  opposition  sprang  into 


the  full  stature  of  a  blaze ;  third,  by  the 
forced  levy  of  three  hundred  thousand 
men.  On  the  twenty- first  of  January, 
1 791,  Louis,  after  his  usual  hesitation, 
signed  the  decree  authorizing  the  ejec- 
tion of  those  vicars  and  curates  who 
would  not  uphold  the  new  civil  consti- 
tution of  the  clergy.  It  may  be  believed 
that  this  stroke  of  national  polity  fell 
heavily  in  mid -France,  where  "priest- 
craft "  had  never  figured  as  a  word  in 
any  possible  dictionary,  and  where  the 
Roman  obedience  had  been  as  perfectly 
established  as  the  solar  system  in  the 
popular  mind.  Says  Lamartine  :  "  The 
Revolution,  until  then  exclusively  polit- 
ical, became  schism  in  the  eyes  of  a 
portion  of  the  clergy  and  the  faithful. 
Among  the  bishops  and  priests,  some 
took  the  civil  oath,  which  was  the  guar- 
antee of  their  lives ;  others  refused  to 
take  it,  or,  having  taken  it,  retracted. 
This  gave   rise  to  trouble   in   many  a 


mind,  to  agitation  of  conscience,  and  to 
division  in  the  temple.  The  great  ma- 
jority of  parishes  had  now  two  minis- 
ters, the  one  a  constitutional  parson, 
salaried  and  protected  by  the  state,  the 
other  refractory,  refusing  the  oath,  be- 
reft of  his  income,  driven  from  his  sanct- 
uary, and  raising  his  altar  in  some  clan- 
destine chapel  or  in  the  open  field.  These 
rival  upholders  of  the  same  worship  ex- 
communicated each  other,  one  in  the 
name  of  the  Government,  one  in  the 
name  of  the  Pope  and  the  Church.  .  .  . 
The  case  was  not  actually,  as  it  stood,  per- 
secution or  civil  war,  but  it  was  the  sure 
prelude  to  both.  .  .  .  When  war  burst 
out,  the  Revolution  had  degenerated." 
It  was  not  until  August  that  the  report 
of  the  uprising  in  the  provinces,  and  the 
full  sense  of  its  significance,  were  accred- 
ited at  Paris.  Simultaneously  the  air 
thickened  with  fierce  rumors  from  Aus- 
tria and    Spain,   and   Dumouriez's   last 


watch -lights  sputtered  out  upon  the 
frontiers.  While  the  attention  of  Eu- 
rope was  fixed  for  a  moment  on  larger 
matters,  the  disbanding  of  ecclesiastics 
and  the  enrolling  of  conscripts  engen- 
dered their  natural  sequence  in  ignored 
La  Vendee,  and  the  placid  farm-country 
sprang  forth  prodigious,  like  a  fireside 
spectre,  menacing  the  fortunes  of  the 
house  with  a  bloody  hand. 

Let  it  be  remembered,  despite  Carlyle's 
random  arrow  at  "  simple  people  blown 
into  flame  and  fury  by  theological  and 
seignorial  bellows,"  that  the  nobles  and 
the  clergy,  whatever  may  have  been  their 
desire,  were  too  well  informed  to  pit  a 
forlorn  corner  of  France  against  the 
united  realm.  Here,  as  in  Paris,  and  for 
rival  arguments  exactly  as  apposite,  the 
Revolution  was  a  matter  belonging  to 
"  the  man  on  the  street."  Against  what 
they  knew  to  be  the  spirit  of  rapine  and 
injustice,  the  people,  of  themselves,  arose. 


Their  campaign  had  no  intrigue,  no  push- 
ing ;  it  had  absolute  purity  of  intention. 
More  perfectly  than  even  the  American 
civil  war,  this  of  La  Vendee  was  fought 
on  a  moral  principle,  and  on  that  solely, 
from  the  start.  Every  advantage  possible 
was  on  the  side  of  submission  ;  the  peas- 
ants would  have  been  let  alone  and  for- 
gotten, presently  had  they  been  weaker, 
and  wiser.  Unable  to  foresee  the  majes- 
tic trend  of  events,  not  having  in  their 
own  sore  memories  the  germ  of  a  verdict 
which  was  to  reverse  the  world,  they  hit 
out,  in  the  dark,  against  the  local  and  the 
immediate  wrong.  Ignorant  as  they 
were,  they  were  not  ignorant  of  their 
jeopardized  liberties.  They  opposed  in- 
iquitous laws  for  the  sake  of  their  own 
commune  ;  their  argument  had  premises 
impregnably  sound.  If  they  were  mad, 
it  must  be  added  that  they  were  right, 
too,  in  the  fullest  relative  senses  of  earth 
and    heaven.     The   titled  gentry  were 


compelled  to  join,  in  nearly  every  case, 
by  their  vehemence.  D'Elbee,  Bon- 
champ,  Lescure,  La  Rochejaquelein, 
Charette,  and  many  of  the  minor  officers, 
were  drawn  from  their  very  firesides,  and 
urged  into  service.  "  You  are  no  braver 
than  we,  but  you  know  better  how  to 
manage,"  so  the  frank  fellows  explained 
it  to  the  lords.  The  priests,  also,  banished 
from  their  sad  parishes  for  refusing  the 
irregular  oaths  proposed  by  the  Assem- 
bly, and  cast  adrift  like  the  hill-side  friars 
of  Ireland,  long  held  aloof  from  sanction- 
ing the  redress  of  arms.  Nowhere,  at 
any  time,  did  they  march  nor  combat 
with  their  flocks.  When  their  bodies 
were  found  upon  the  field,  it  was  man- 
ifest that  they  had  been  shot  while  min- 
istering to  the  dying.  Such,  on  this  point, 
was  the  Vendean  sensitiveness,  and  aus- 
tere regard  for  the  proprieties,  that  a 
young  subdeacon  discovered  in  the  ranks 
was   angrily   and   summarily  dismissed. 


Not  until  the  army  was  at  Dol  did  the 
pastors  ever  attempt  to  "  fanaticize  "  the 
soldiery  by  working  upon  their  religious 
feeling  as  a  means  of  reviving  courage. 
Nor  did  the  laymen  ever  waive  towards 
them  that  which, in  Turreau's  phrase,  was 
their  "  blind  and  incurable  attachment." 
At  a  sign  from  some  active  Levite  they 
actually  disbanded  during  Holy  Week 
of  1793.  The  Republican  squadron,  sent 
to  quell  the  revolt,  found  the  villages  in 
dead  quiet,  and  so  returned  north  ;  but 
on  Easter  Monday  the  roads  were  alive 
again. 

Well  was  the  Bocage  called,  by  the 
earliest  of  its  very  few  English  critics, 
"  the  last  land  of  romance  in  Europe." 
The  quarrel  espoused  for  conscience' 
sake  had  a  child-like  disinterestedness. 
What  the  men  endured  we  know ;  the 
rewards  they  meant  to  ask  for  their  suc- 
cess were  these :  that  religion  should  be 
established,  free  of  state   interference; 


25 

that  the  Bocage  itself  should  be  known 
as  La  Vendee,  with  a  distinct  adminis- 
tration ;  that  the  King  should  make  it  a 
visit,  and  retain  a  corps  of  Vendeans  in 
his  guard  ;  and  that  the  white  flag  should 
float  forever  from  every  steeple,  in  mem- 
ory of  the  war !  It  is  clear  that  they 
had  little  to  wish  for,  and  that  they 
had  no  greed.  Nor  did  they  fight  for 
glory,  the  dearest  motive  of  their  race. 
"  There  is  no  glory  in  civil  war,"  said 
Bonchamp,  in  what  was,  for  once,  too 
ascetic  a  generality.  But  they  were  ded- 
icated souls ;  they  bore  themselves  gen- 
tly, gayly,  without  boast  or  spite ;  and 
they  long  continued  to  honor  the  ob- 
ligations laid  on  them  by  the  purest 
cause  that  ever  drew  sword.  Their 
blows  were  struck  for  the  independ- 
ence of  their  religion,  and  only  inci- 
dentally for  the  monarchy  then  identi- 
fied with  it.  From  the  chivalrous  con- 
versation between  the  Marquis  of  Les- 


cure  and  General  Quetineau,  then  his 
prisoner,  we  learn  that  even  Lescure 
would  have  rushed  to  the  common  de- 
fence had  the  Austrian  made  good  his 
threat  to  pollute  the  soil  of  France. 
They  failed,  we  say ;  yet  what  they  fought 
for  they  secured ;  the  liberty  of  the 
Church,  and  the  restoration  (temporary, 
as  things  are  in  France)  of  the  govern- 
ment of  their  allegiance.  Louis  XVIII. 
was  unworthy  of  their  devotion.  He 
was  mean  enough  afterwards  to  reduce 
the  pension  granted  by  Napoleon  him- 
self to  Madame  de  Bonchamp ;  to  sus- 
pect the  immeasurable  loyalty  of  Ma- 
dame de  Lescure  ;  to  refuse  admission 
to  the  portraits  of  Stofflet  and  Catheli- 
neau  when  opening  his  galler}''  of  gen- 
erals at  Saint  Cloud,  because,  forsooth, 
they  were  but  plebeians.  In  a  hundred 
ways,  by  delayed  recognitions,  by  tempo- 
rizing, by  denials,  and  by  cringing  to  alien 
opinion  (things  deprecated  with  energy 


28 

by  the  Abbe  Deniau  in  his  valuable 
work),  he  broke  the  faith  of  a  too  faith- 
ful party.  Yet  the  praise  the  western 
subjects  hoped  for  from  the  little  Dau- 
phin of  1793  they  won  from  this  man. 
"I  owe  my  crown  to  the  Vendeans,"  he 
said,  with  the  family  characteristic  of 
gracious  speech. 

The  peasants,  therefore,  driven  to  the 
wall,  rebelled  without  forethought  or 
plan ;  a  desperate  handful  against  the 
strength  of  new  France.  At  remote 
points,  with  no  concert  whatever,  hostil- 
ities began :  on  Sunday,  March  tenth,  in 
Anjou,  two  days  later  in  Lower  Poitou  ; 
and  months  passed  ere  one  knot  of  in- 
surrectionists heard  tidings  of  the  other. 
With  the  populace  at  Maulevrier  rose 
Stofflet,  the  swarthy  game-keeper  of  the 
resident  lord  ;  Stofflet  of  the  German  ac- 
cent, harsh  and  hard,  big-nosed,  unlet- 
tered, trusty,  a  keenly  intelligent  and 
masterful  disciplinarian.     But  the  note- 


29 

worthiest  leader  was  Jacques  Cathe- 
lineau,  "a  painstaking,  neighborly  man," 
wagoner,  and  vender  of  woollens. 
There  had  been  a  disturbance  at  Saint 
Florent  over  the  drafting ;  the  Gov- 
ernment troops  fired ;  the  young  re- 
cruits charged  on  their  assailants  and 
routed  them,  pillaging  the  municipality 
and  burning  the  papers.  Cathelineau  of 
Pin  -  en  -  Mauges  was  kneading  bread 
when  he  heard  of  it.  "  We  must  begin 
the  war,"  he  murmured.  His  startled 
wife  echoed  his  words,  wailing  :  "  Begin 
what  war  ?  Who  will  help  you  begin 
the  war  ?"  "  God,"  he  answered  quiet- 
ly. Putting  her  aside,  he  wiped  his 
arms,  drew  on  his  coat,  and  went  out 
instantly  to  the  market-place.  That  af- 
ternoon he  attacked  two  Republican  de- 
tachments and  seized  their  ammunition, 
his  small  force  augmenting  on  the 
march ;  in  a  few  days  it  was  one  thou- 
sand strong,  and  carried  Chollet.     Cath- 


33 

elineau's  three  brothers  enlisted  under 
his  banner ;  in  one  short  year  all  four 
were  to  be  gathered  into  their  stainless 
graves.  He  was  called  "  the  saint  of 
Anjou,"  and  he  deserved  it ;  a  man  of 
truth,  discretion,  dignity,  and  sweetness, 
about  whom  the  wounded  crept  to  die. 


f 


HOSE  born  in  the  purple 
had  all  the  "tenderness  with 
great  spirit "  of  Plato's  elect 
race.  They  had  the  deli- 
cacy and  high-mindedness 
of  the  primitive  gentleman.  A  pleasant 
instance  of  the  odd  and  fine  retention  of 
amenities  in  the  cannon's  mouth,  occur- 
red before  Nantes,  where  Stofflet,  explo- 
sive as  usual,  found  occasion  to  challenge 
Bonchamp.  "  No,  sir,"  said  Bonchamp, 
"  God  and  the  King  only  have  the  dis- 
posal of  my  life,  and  our  cause  would 
suffer  too  greviously  were  it  to  be  de- 
prived of  yours."  Friendships  throve 
among  them.  Lescure,  La  Rochejaque- 
Icin,  and  BeauvoUiers  were  closely  at- 
tached to  one  another,  as  were  Marigny 


and  Perault.  Preferments  went  wholly 
by  natural  nerve,  intelligence,  and  a  vote 
of  deserts.  There  was  no  scheme  of  pro- 
motion to  benefit  those  of  gentle  blood  ; 
the  army,  formed  of  a  sudden,  formed 
into  a  genuine  democracy.  "  They  never 
talked  '  equality  '  in  La  Vendee."  But  its 
first  generalissimo,  acclaimed  with  uni- 
versal homage  and  good-will,  was  the 
peasant  Cathelineau.  No  long-descend- 
ed knight  floated  his  own  banner  ;  as  the 
Prince  of  Talmont  had  to  be  reminded 
at  Fougeres,  th^Jleur-de-lys  was  sufficient 
for  them  all.  Perfect  confidence  reigned. 
After  the  retaking  of  Chatillon,  the 
young  Duperat,  in  company  with  three 
others,  mischievously  broke  open  the 
strong-box  in  Westermann's  carriage ; 
there  was  presumptive  evidence  enough 
that  they  had  taken  money  from  it.  A 
council  ensued,  and  Duperat,  questioned 
by  Lescure,  denied  that  they  had  done 
so.     His  high  character  was  known,  and 


33 

though  the  mystery  was  not  cleared  up, 
the  proceedings  were  closed  with  an 
apology'.  Here,  at  Chatillon,  pierced 
with  twelve  sabres,  fell  Beaurepaire,  who 
had  joined  the  "  brigands  "  at  eighteen. 
The  Chevalier  of  Mondyon  was  a  pretty 
lad  of  fourteen,  a  truant  from  his  school. 
At  the  battle  of  Chantonnay  the  little 
fellow  was  placed  next  to  a  tall  lieuten- 
ant, who,  under  the  pretext  of  a  wound, 
wished  to  withdraw.  "  I  do  not  see  that 
you  are  hurt,  sir,"  said  the  child  ;  "and, 
as  your  departure  would  discourage  the 
men,  I  will  shoot  you  through  the  head 
if  you  stir."  And  as  he  was  quite  capa- 
ble of  that  Roman  justice,  the  tall  lieu- 
tenant stayed.  De  Langerie,  two  years 
Mondyon's  junior,  had  his  pony  killed 
under  him  in  his  first  onset.  Put  at  a 
safe  and  remote  post,  but  without  orders, 
he  reappeared,  during  the  hour,  galloping 
back  on  a  fresh  horse  to  fight  for  the 
King.     Duchaffault,  at  eleven,  sent  back 


34 

to  his  mother,  rode  into  the  ranks  again 
at  -Lugon,  to  die.  Such  were  the  boys  of 
La  Vendee. 

The  Chevaher  Frangois-Athenase  de 
Charette  was  first  to  lead  the  rebels  in 
the  wild  marsh-lands  of  Lower  Poitou. 
He  had  been  a  ship's  lieutenant.  De- 
spite the  known  laxity  of  his  private 
conduct,  Charette  was  a  power.  In 
matters  of  sense  and  courage  he  was 
equal  to  the  best  of  his  extraordinary 
colleagues,  all  of  whom  he  was  destined 
to  outlive.  He  was  twent3''-eight  years 
old  when  he  took  command  at  Mache- 
could.  Charles-Melchior  Artus,  Marquis 
of  Bonchamp,  was  enrolled  at  the  sol- 
emn inauguration  of  the  war.  He  had 
seen  service  in  India,  and  was  in  his 
early  prime  :  a  scholar,  an  accomplished 
tactician,  and  a  man  greatly  beloved, 
whose  name  is  yet  in  benediction.  La 
Ville-Bauge,  placed  by  force  among  the 
Blues  (so  called  from  the  color  of  their 


coats,  which  under  the  kings  had  been 
white),  abandoned  them,  and  joined  the 
insurgents  at  Thouars.  He  was  a  youth 
of  marked  steadiness  and  patience,  dear 
to  Lescure  and  to  Henri.  Gigot  d'Elbee, 
late  of  the  Dauphin  cavalry,  was  forty 
years  of  age,  already  white-haired,  of 
small  and  compact  build.  Possessed  of 
many  virtues,  he  was  not  a  striking  nor 
engaging  character;  his  conceit,  fortu- 
nately,harmed  neither  himself  nor  others. 
It  was  he  who  read  sermons  to  his  men, 
who  carried  with  him  the  images  of  his 
patron  saints,  and  who,  above  all,  talked 
so  much  and  so  well  of  the  wisdom 
which  directs  us,  that  the  roguish  con- 
gregation in  camp  fastened  on  him  the 
nickname  of  "  La  Provide7ice."  For  Les- 
cure, as  for  Cathelineau,  the  peasants 
had  a  veneration.  Unselfish,  contained 
and  cool,  versed  admirably  in  military 
science,  Lescure  at  twenty-six  was  a 
bookish  recluse,  with  a  heart  all  kind- 


36 

ness,  and  a  bearing  somewhat  lofty  and 
austere.  Born  in  1766,  in  1791  he  had 
married  his  first  cousin,  Victoire,  daugh- 
ter of  the  fine  mettlesome  old  Marquis 
of  Donnissan.  To  this  timid  girl,  who 
heroically  followed  her  husband  through 
the  Vendean  crisis  (and  who  herself, 
years  after,  was  to  play  a  second  illus- 
trious role  as  the  wife  of  Louis  de  La 
Rochejaquelein),  we  are  beholden  for 
the  Memoires,  naive  and  precious,  which 
supply  nearly  every  main  detail  of  the 
long  struggle,  which  persuaded  out  of 
life  the  ignorance  and  prejudice  of  its 
traducers,  and  which  serve  as  the  worth- 
iest monument  ever  raised  to  the  loving 
army,  Catholic  and  Royal. 


f 


N  their  curious  dialect,  the 
Vendeans  had  a  verb,  scga- 
zller,  scparpiller,  and  they 
lived  up  to  it.  It  meant 
scattering  and  sharp-shoot- 
ing, every  man  for  himself,  in  what  we 
Americans  might  call  the  historic  Lex- 
ington style.  Each  carried  his  car- 
tridges in  his  pocket.  If  any  com- 
plained of  lack  of  powder,  Henri  had 
a  pricking  answer:  "Well,  my  children, 
the  Blues  have  plenty  of  it!"  which 
reversed  matters  in  five  minutes.  Bred 
in  a  hunting  country,  the  King's  men 
were  expert  shots  from  boyhood.  Farm- 
ing weapons  fixed  on  handles  adorned 
the  marching  no-pay  volunteers.  Such 
guns  as  they  had  were  put  into  the  ablest 


hands ;  and  wonderful  musketeers  they 
made,  these  hunters  of  Loroux  and  the 
Bocage.  They  crept  behind  walls  and 
hedges,  not  firing,  as  did  the  troops  of 
the  line,  at  the  height  of  a  man,  but  aim- 
ing individually,  and  rarely  missing,  so 
that  throughout  an  action  their  loss  was 
but  as  one  to  five ;  they  leaped  garden 
terraces,  and  peered  from  the  angles  of 
strange  little  foot-paths,  making  sudden 
volleys  and  attacks,  the  chief  usually 
foremost,  the  men  eager  and  undrilled ; 
or  they  ran  forward  by  scores,  fronting 
the  hostile  cannon,  flinging  themselves 
down  at  every  explosion,  and  so  creeping 
nearer  and  nearer,  until  they  might  grap- 
ple with  the  stupefied  cannoneers  hand  to 
hand.  This  was  their  favorite  strategy. 
More  than  one  town  was  actually  taken 
by  savage  wrestling  and  boxing,  without 
a  report  of  fire-arms  at  all.  They  lacked 
wagons,  reserves,  luggage  ;  each  carried 
his  own  rations.    They  travelled  without 


a  calendar,  for  that  sanctioned  by  the 
Republic, and  therefore, with  Fabred'Eg- 
lantine's  pretty  fooleries  of  Flordal  and 
Pluviose,  cashiered,  was  the  only  one 
extant  in  France. 

They  had  thirty  lively  drums  and  no 
trumpets  ;  when  they  wanted  an  inspir- 
ing noise  they  sang  a  hymn.  Sentinels 
could  not  be  trained  ;  it  seems  incred- 
ible that  they  should  have  done  for  two 
years  without  pickets  or  patrols,  except 
when  the  officers  took  turns  at  a  nec- 
essary duty.  But  in  this,  as  in  other 
matters,  the  strong-minded  rustics,  who 
freely  entered  the  ranks,  reasoned,  ob- 
jected, fought  shy,  and  were  at  once  the 
solace  and  the  despair  of  their  com- 
manders. A  certain  fatal  independence 
was  born  in  their  blood.  What  chance, 
at  any  time  and  however  valiant,  has 
the  army  of  momentary  concurrence 
against  the  army  of  sworn  obedience? 
Innocent  of  discipline,  they  were  all  but 


impossible  to  direct  on  an  open  plain. 
Every  movement  was  a  farce  in  tactics. 
A  chief  exercised  his  full  authority  ac- 
cording to  the  individual  esteem  in 
which  he  was  held.  This  singular  code, 
likely  to  be  subversive  of  all  authority 
elsewhere,  was  the  only  one  which  proud 
and  willing  Vendee  could  be  brought  to 
understand.  "  Such  a  general  goes  such 
a  way,"  the  adjutant  would  call ;  "  who 
goes  with  him  ?"  And  the  tenants  of 
his  own  seigneury,  the  guerilla  vassals, 
would  run  with  a  shout  after  him,  form- 
ing their  lines  by  some  convenient  object 
— a  house  or  a  tree.  Their  Monsieur 
Henri  had  a  formula  borrowed  uncon- 
sciously from  the  old  war-cry  of  Gas- 
ton de  Foix :  "  He  who  loves  me  follows 
me !"  When  he  flashed  down  the  front 
on  his  wonderful  white  horse,  which 
the  cheering  peasants  had  christened 
the  Fallowdeer,  thinking  nothing  else 
could  be  so  wild,  so  delicate,  so  amaz- 


ingly  swift,  parish  after  parish  ralHed  to 
him  in  a  Httle  cloud.  The  fashion  of 
gathering  in  clans  and  bands,  primitive 
as  it  was,  had  its  advantages.  Every- 
one stood,  in  action,  next  another  of  his 
own  estate  or  blood ;  and  La  Vendee 
was  notoriously  careful  of  its  wounded 
and  slain.  Never  were  men  more  de- 
pendent on  the  nerve  and  sagacity  of 
their  leaders.  A  disabled  officer  dared 
not  budge,  or  the  crazy  columns  would 
give  way.  Lescure,  unhorsed  at  Sau- 
mur,  would  have  kept  the  troops  igno- 
rant of  his  hurt  had  not  the  boy  Beauvol- 
liers  thrown  himself  upon  him  with  a 
loud  cry  of  lamentation  and  started  a 
panic  in  the  ranks.  Charette  being 
wounded  long  after  at  Dufour,  his  regi- 
ments dispersed  like  sheep.  When  Cath- 
elineau  of  the  shining  brow  fell  in  sight 
of  his  army,  there  was  instant  rout.  At 
the  recapture  of  Chatillon  many  a  dis- 
sembler, sick   and  weak,  rode  forth  in 


affected  vigor,  and  so  forced  the  splendid 
issue  of  the  day. 

The  cavalry  bestrode  steeds  of  divers 
eccentricities,  but  at  the  tails  of  one  and 
all  figured  the  enemy's  derided  tri-color 
cockade.  Ropes  were  stirrups  to  these 
gallant  paladins,  and  their  sabres  hung 
by  packthreads.  They  had  small  lei- 
sure for  the  conventions  of  the  toilet: 
their  hair  and  beards  looked  like  Or- 
son's. The  officers  wore  woollen  blouses 
and  gaiters,  having,  like  the  others,  the 
little  red  consecrated  heart  sewed  on 
their  coats  ;  they  lacked  at  first  any  dis- 
tinguishing dress.  Neither  they  nor  the 
privates  received  a  sou  for  services  ;  if  a 
man  were  in  want  he  asked  for  a  dis- 
bursement, and,  until  supplies  failed,  he 
got  it.  Funds  flowed  into  the  general 
reservoir  from  the  pockets  of  the  gentry, 
and  from  a  source  as  obvious — the  rights 
of  confiscation.  The  main  army  aver- 
aged twenty  thousand  men  ;  at  a  pinch 


it  could  be  doubled.  Sobriety  reigned 
in  the  camps,  though  it  was  the  one 
considerable  virtue  to  which  the  good 
peasants,  un- French  in  most  matters, 
were  not  blindly  addicted.  Consider- 
ing the  prohibition  against  the  presence 
of  women,  it  is  surprising  to  find  here  and 
there  undetected  in  the  van  some  spot- 
less amazon  like  Jeanne  Robin,  or  the  re- 
vered Renee  Bordereau,  or  Dame  de  La 
Rochefoucauld,  a  cavalry  captain,  shot 
upon  the  Breton  coast.  Piety  was  uni- 
versal. The  scythe  -  bearing  soldiery, 
meeting  a  wayside  cross  half-way  to  the 
battery,  would  doff  hats  and  kneel  an  in- 
stant, then  charge  like  fiends  on  the  foe. 
The  parishes  sent  carts  to  the  road-side, 
laden  with  provisions  for  the  passing 
cohorts.  The  women,  children,  and  old 
men  knelt  in  the  cornfields,  while  the 
din  went  on  afar  off,  to  beseech  the  Lord 
of  Hosts.  At  Laval  and  Chollet,  where 
the  sieges  closed  perforce  in  one  mad 


scrimmage  in  the  dark,  the  Vendeans 
fired  wherever  they  heard  an  oath,  surer 
than  ever  the  CromwelHans  were  before 
them,  that  in  that  direction  they  could 
bag  none  but  legitimate  game. 

The  peasants  were  so  many  big  chil- 
dren ;  they  had  no  adult  comprehension 
of  their  momentous  concerns,  to  which 
they  gave  themselves  by  spurts,  with 
perfect  disinterestedness,  ardor,  and  zeal. 
After  the  first  hint  that  the  victory  was 
theirs,  they  hastened  to  ring  the  church- 
bells,  and  make  bonfires  of  the  papers  of 
the  administration — proceedings  which, 
according  to  Madame  de  Lescure,  af- 
forded them  unfailing  amusement.  They 
went  into  action  like  a  black  whirlwind, 
with  roundelays  or  litanies  on  their  lips, 
and  the  continuous  battle-cry:  "The 
King  for  us,  all  the  same  !"  They  frol- 
icked about  the  famous  twelve-pounder 
they  had  named  Marie  -  Jeanne  ;  they 
kissed  its  ornate  brazen  rim  ;  thev  buried 


its  inscriptions  of  Richelieu's  era  in 
flowers  and  ribbons ;  they  lost  it  with 
mopings,  and  they  recaptured  it  with 
salvos  of  joy.  "Above  all  things,  boys, 
we  must  get  Marie-Jeanne  back !"  cried 
La  Rochejaquelein  on  a  certain  occasion. 
"The  best  runner  among  you,  that's 
the  man  for  her  !"  There  was  no  reason 
whatever  for  such  special  devotion  :  it 
was  pure  fun  on  all  sides.  They  were 
never  under  arms  for  more  than  a  few 
consecutive  days.  The  gathering  to- 
gether was  a  sensational  sight.  The 
church -bells  clanged  for  a  signal,  the 
windmills  gesticulated,  horns  were  blown 
on  the  hills;  and  proprietor,  farmer, 
peasant,  with  sticks  and  hunting -guns, 
came  threading  the  hedges,  and  running 
in  many  a  long  dark  line  through  the 
waving  crops  into  the  village  market- 
place. The  troops  were  repeatedly  dis- 
persing and  rallying,  giving  their  chiefs 
endless  worr}^  and  chagrin.    They  fought, 


46 

like  Spenser's  angels,  "  all  for  love,  and 
nothing  for  reward."  But  they  left  the 
ranks  when  they  chose ;  after  a  success, 
rather  than  after  a  defeat,  they  would 
scatter  to  their  homes  like  so  much  this- 
tle-down in  the  air,  and  it  was  hopeless 
to  try  to  follow  up  an  advantage  gained. 
It  was  when  difficulties  were  suspended 
that,  in  the  wisdom  of  their  villageous 
heads,  they  hurried  off,  one  to  his  wife, 
and  one  to  his  farm,  and  one  to  his  mer- 
chandise. No  general  was  baffled  and 
angered  oftener  by  this  freak  than  Henri. 
The  valor  of  the  Vendeans  was  incompar- 
able, though  one  might  borrow  a  musical 
metaphor  and  add  that  it  swerved  too 
easily  from  pitch.  And  it  is  noteworthy, 
as  by  a  paradox,  that  whenever  they 
wavered  it  was  not,  at  least,  through 
dread  of  any  personal  hardship.  They 
were  often  ragged  and  hungry,  but  they 
did  not  play  truant  for  that.  They  soon 
underwent  horrible  poverty  and  distress. 


and  lacked  food  and  clothes.  The 
picked  men  of  a  company  long  marched 
in  grotesque  dominos  out  of  sacked 
playhouses,  in  la^\yers'  gowns,  even  in 
furniture-stuffs  and  draperies.  The  chiv- 
alric  De  Verteuil  was  found  dead  on  the 
field  equipped  in  two  petticoats,  one 
about  his  neck,  the  other  about  his 
waist :  as  noble  armor,  perhaps,  as  offi- 
cer ever  wore.  Frequently,  when  ammu- 
nition was  in  abundance,  the  unaccount- 
able army  was  overcome ;  and  as  often, 
without  a  carabine  among  six,  it  swept 
ever>thing  before  it.  Napoleon  was  the 
first  to  see  —  all  the  w^orld  sees  now — 
how  little  was  wanted  to  secure  their 
ultimate  triumph ;  how  drill,  a  few  kegs 
of  powder,  a  few  observant,  able,  cool 
heads  where  the  exiles  were  congregat- 
ed, and  the  prestige  and  authority  of 
some  royal  name,  might  have  built  up 
again,  it  may  be  in  justice,  the  ancient 
fabric    surely   in    justice    pulled    down. 


48 

They  had  no  fair  play.  *'  Yet  these 
same  men,  by  bravery  and  enthusiasm, 
and  by  knowledge  developed  of  short 
experience,  conquered  a  part  of  France, 
obtained  an  honorable  peace,  and  de- 
fended their  cause  with  more  glory  and 
success  than  did  the  leagued  allies." 

As  we  get  away  from  the  grim  ethics 
of  history  the  aesthetics  of  it  take  shape 
and  color,  and  give  us  an  abstract  pleas- 
ure from  the  centres  of  thought  and 
pain.  There  is  an  unspeakable  attract- 
iveness, despite  all,  in  the  image  of  these 
turbulent  years — an  almost  Arabian  be- 
guilement,  as  of  something  which  never 
need  be  true.  The  course  of  events  is 
like  a  romantic  drama,  full  of  "  points," 
of  poses,  of  electric  surprises ;  the  dia- 
logue flows  in  alexandrines  ;  the  crises 
are  settled  in  the  nick  of  time.  The 
talk  is  the  rhetoric  of  hearts  sincere,  but 
French.  The  devoted  Marquis  of  Don- 
nissan    breaks    in    upon    two    duelling 


49 

swords  :  "  '  What !  the  Lord  Christ  par- 
dons his  executioners,  and  a  soldier  of 
the  Christian  army  tries  to  slay  his  com- 
rade ?'  At  these  words  they  drop  their 
swords  and  embrace  each  other !"  Or, 
after  the  terrible  battle  of  Mans,  and  not 
long  before  her  little  daughter's  birth, 
Madame  de  Lescure,  hemmed  in  the 
choked  streets  of  the  city,  catches  in  de- 
spair at  the  hand  of  a  gentle-faced  young 
trooper  pushing  by  :  "  Sir,  have  pity  on 
a  poor  woman  who  cannot  go  on.  Help 
me !"  Whereupon  the  young  trooper 
weeps  some  feverish  tears  :  "  What  can 
I  do  ?  I  am  a  woman  also  !"  Or  that 
charming  impostor,  the  pseudo-bishop  of 
Agra,  stands  up  before  the  serried  lines, 
and  sheds  upon  them  such  prose  as 
Matthew  Arnold  should  praise  forever : 
''Race  antique  et  fidcle  des  servitetirsde  nos 
rois,pieux  zelateitrs  dii  trotie  et  de  Vaittel, 
C7ifants  de  la  Vendee,  marcJiez,  covibattez, 
triomphez!  C  'est  Dien  qui  vous  Vordontiey 


)yr^'m: 


IS 


g):g^(?^HE  sportsman  Count  of  La 


Rochejaquelein   had   it  all 


^1  y-/i%  his  own  way  at  the  Aubiers. 
^^^^2"%  H^  took  the  town,  and 
captured  large  supplies,  and 
gleefully  perched  upon  the  cemetery  wall, 
fired  no  less  than  two  hundred  telling 
shots.  Thence  he  rode  by  night  to  Bon- 
champ  and  D'Elbee,  and  to  the  weary 
allies  of  Anjou,  bringing  aid  and  arms ; 
and,  as  a  gift  not  least,  the  contagious 
cheer  that  was  in  him.  When  he  had 
fulfilled  his  public  duty,  but  not  before 
that,  he  flew  to  the  rescue  of  his  friends. 
Scarcely  had  Henri  left  Clisson,  in  the 
spring,  when  Lescure  and  all  his  family 
were  seized  as  suspects,  and  conducted 
to  Bressuire,  but  forgotten  there  when 


fear  caused  an  evacuation  of  the  borough. 
Henri  himself  easily  carried  it,  and  burst 
in  upon  them  at  the  chateau,  crying  that 
he  had  freed  them.  By  a  comical  incon 
sistency,  great  numbers  of  the  Republican 
inhabitants  rushed  for  protection  back 
to  Clisson,  as  soon  as  Citizen  Lescure, 
walking  a  free  man  from  Bressuire,  had 
entered  the  gates.  That  godly  gentle- 
man made  bashful  Henri  kiss  every 
woman  among  them,  to  ease  their  fears 
of  the  "  monster  "  whom  they  believed 
him  to  be. 

Six  victories,  due  to  Henri's  restless 
energy,  followed  in  swift  succession. 
Though  his  growth,  in  all  things,  was 
steadily  towards  reasonableness  and  the 
golden  mean,  his  chief  early  character- 
istic was  hare-brained  intrepidity;  a 
habit  of  confronting  too  near,  pursuing 
too  far,  "  combating  with  giants,"  as  old 
Burton  says  of  his  warrior,  "  running 
first    upon    a   breach,   and,    as    another 


Phillipus,  riding  into  the  thickest  of  his 
enemies."  He  was  wholly  without  fear, 
and  often,  at  first,  without  foresight ;  and 
it  took  many  bitter  denials  and  reverses 
to  teach  him  the  pardonableness  of  de- 
liberation and  second  thought  in  others. 
But  while  he  lived,  wherever  he  went,  he 
was  a  force.  He  was  of  the  stuff  of  Ho- 
mer's joyous  men.  His  decisive  fashion 
swayed  elder  and  better  soldiers.  His 
troops  were  his  for  risks  such  as  no  gen- 
eral else  besought  them  to  run ;  every 
day  he  won  their  hearts  anew  by  some 
spurt  of  daring,  some  astonishing  fooling 
with  death  or  failure.  ]\Iany  a  dragoon 
was  cut  down  with  his  sabre ;  horses 
were  slain  under  him  again  and  again. 
It  is  said  of  him  that  he  never  took  a 
prisoner  without  offering  him  a  single 
fight,  sword  to  sword.  This  laughing 
audacity  of  his  had  no  cant  in  it.  It  was 
the  metal  of  which  he  was  made,  that 
which  he  lived  by,  the  blameless  outcome 


53 

of  himself :  a  thing  to  sadden  and  exas- 
perate his  companions,  and  fill  them 
with  foreboding.  Pilgrim-shells  are 
quartered  upon  the  arms  of  his  house, 
"  the  scallop-shells  of  quiet,"  as  the  poet 
sings.  A  more  sarcastic  advice  for  the 
La  Rochejaqueleins  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  conceive ! 

As  the  close  study  of  the  Vendeans 
brings  to  mind  the  character  of  the 
Scotch  Highlanders,  great  at  an  onset, 
with  not  a  whit  more  native  knowledge 
of  the  common  etiquette  of  war,  so  Hen- 
ri himself,  in  sober  simplicity  of  nature, 
in  the  firm  thoroughness  of  all  he  had  to 
do,  even  in  the  agreeable  accident  of 
personal  beauty,  is  not  unlike  a  much- 
maligned  man  who  lived  a  century  be- 
fore him  :  John  Graham  of  Claverhouse, 
the  never-to-be-forgotten  "  deil  o'  Dun- 
dee." Claverhouse  had  a  habit  of  curl- 
ing his  hair  on  papers ;  and  one  learns, 
with  the  same  sensation,  that  Henri  had 


one  of  those  singular  antipathies  no  ef- 
fort of  will  can  correct.  At  Pontorson, 
while  Madame  de  Lescure  was  sewing  in  a 
room,  with  a  tame  black-and-gray  squirrel 
in  her  lap,  he  came  in,  and  backed  against 
the  door,  pale  and  trembling.  The  sight 
of  a  squirrel,  as  he  said  with  a  laugh,  gave 
him  a  feeling  of  invincible  terror !  His 
friend  asked  him  to  stroke  the  little 
creature.  He  did  so,  shaking  in  every 
limb,  and  avowing  his  weakness  with 
great  good-humor.  He  was  never  much 
of  a  talker.  Discussions  were  intolerable 
to  him.  If  called  upon  in  council,  he 
would  speak  his  mind  briefly,  overcom- 
ing an  extreme  diffidence ;  and  having 
done,  he  withdrew,  or  worse,  fell  asleep. 
No  one  was  more  humane  at  battle's 
end ;  but,  nevertheless,  Henri's  element 
was  battle.  His  Paradise  was  like  the 
heathen  board,  where,  after  the  combat 
and  the  chase,  he  might  sit  at  the  "  red 
right  hand  of  Odin ;"  and  the  masterly 


I 


rider  looked  forward  to  a  life  where  he 
might  play  soldier  forever.  "  When  the 
King  "  (Louis  XVII.)  "  is  on  the  throne," 
he  confided  to  his  cousin  Lescure,  "  I 
shall  ask  for  a  regiment  of  hussars,  a 
regiment  always  on  the  gallop."  It  was 
his  whole  desire  of  guerdon. 

Lescure  had  also  the  Roman  devoted- 
ness :  any  morning  he  stood  ready  to 
outdo  Curtius  and  Horatius.  In  the 
rout  of  Moulin-aux-Chevres  he  drew  the 
hostile  squadrons  from  the  pursuit  of  the 
frantic  Vendeans  by  calling  their  atten- 
tion to  himself  and  to  La  Rochejaquelein 
by  name.  At  Thouars  he  gained  the 
bridge  of  Vrine  alone,  amid  a  shower 
of  balls.  He  returned  to  his  dispirited 
band  with  exhortations  ;  one  emboldened 
comrade  followed  him  to  the  second 
charge.  But  on  the  instant  Henri  ar- 
rived with  Forestier,  to  join  Lescure  and 
fire  the  lagging  troops,  as  the  celestial 
armies  are  fabled  to  have  fought  at  need 


56 

for  the  old  commonwealths.  Here,  this 
same  day,  mounted  on  the  shoulders  of 
a  gigantic  peasant  named  Texier,  one  of 
the  most  useful  men  in  the  ranks,  Henri 
broke  the  mouldy  coping  of  the  fortress 
wall,  and  through  the  breach  hurled 
stones  at  the  flying  Blues.  His  course 
henceforward  is  to  be  tracked  in  these 
flashing  incidents,  deeds  compacted  of 
demonic  sense  and  wit.  Pauvert  de- 
picts him  breaking  the  tri-color  lines 
outside  Argenton  merely  by  whistling 
through,  with  two  friends  in  his  train, 
like  a  blast  of  wind.  At  Chateau-Gontier 
he  seized  and  bore  the  colors ;  there  and 
elsewhere,  wherever  he  moved,  bullets 
ploughed  the  ground  under  him,  and  sent 
up  a  puff  of  dust  to  his  spurs.  While 
his  weary  infantry  slept,  he  was  known 
to  watch  for  them,  in  an  exposed  biv- 
ouac, and  turn  his  idleness  to  account 
by  picking  cartridges  for  his  poorer 
"  children  "  out  of  the  wealthy  pockets 


of  the  adjacent  slain.  He  and  Stofflet 
reconnoitred  the  streets  of  hostile  Cha- 
tillon  by  night,  on  all  fours,  the  sentinel 
refraining  from  challenging  the  passage 
of  the  big  dogs  they  were  supposed  to 
be.  Observe  the  tricks  of  a  generalis- 
simo, on  whose  safety  the  balance  of 
empire  hung  !  He  was  a  lad  ;  he  did  not 
know  his  value;  but  what  he  did  know 
was  that  nobody  could  manage  these 
indispensable  lesser  manoeuvres  so  ex- 
quisitely as  himself.  '' Quel  gaillard !" 
shouted  those  who  at  first  held  back 
from  this  incorrigible,  superculpable, 
adorable,  business-like  creature  of  a 
Htnvi ;"  quel  gazHard /"  At  the  siege 
of  Saumur,  at  a  wavering  moment  of  the 
assault,  he  flung  his  hat  into  the  in- 
trenchments.  "  Who  will  fetch  that  for 
me?"  he  cried,  as  certain  of  his  response 
as  was  the  great  Conde,  or  Essex  before 
Cadiz  in  1596.  Of  course,  with  his  usual 
ver\'e,  he  leaped  towards  it  himself,  and 


58 

the  crowd  rushed  after  him  as  one.  In 
the  same  engagement  he  saved  the  life 
of  his  lo3^al  Vilie-Bauge,  struck  from  his 
stirrups  while  loading  Henri's  pieces  for 
him ;  as  at  Antrain,  during  the  twenty- 
two  hours'  battle,  and  with  a  call  for 
much  greater  adroitness,  he  saved  that 
of  La  Roche  Saint  Andre. 

The  central  event  of  this  period  was 
the  five  days'  victory  at  Saumur.  By 
Cathelineau's  order  a  Te  Deiwi  was  sung 
in  the  church,  the  captured  flags,  rent 
with  balls  and  black  with  smoke  and 
blood,  dipping  to  the  chancel  floor  at 
every  sound  of  the  Holy  Name.  Such 
a  spectacle  put  them  all  in  an  exalted 
mood.  Henri  was  found  at  a  window, 
meekly  musing  over  their  fortunes :  he, 
the  deliverer,  who  placed  elsewhere  the 
primal  credit  of  the  deliverance.  The 
garrison  here  was  left  to  his  charge, 
much  to  his  disrelish.  "They  make  a 
veteran  of  me  !"  he  said,  ruefully,  for  the 


affairs  he  loved  were  going  on  outside. 
The  inaction  of  the  time  told  on  his 
men,  quite  as  discerning  as  himself,  and 
far  less  dutiful ;  despite  the  fifteen  sous 
a  day  which,  as  the  first  Vendean  bribe, 
were  offered  them  to  remain,  they  per- 
ceived that  there  was  nothing  more  to 
fear,  and  slipped  away  to  their  homes. 
Soon  but  nine  were  left,  and  with  them 
Henri  departed  gloomily,  carrying  his 
cannon,  and  at  Thouars,  since  not  a 
cannoneer  came  back  to  relieve  him, 
burying  it  in  the  river.  Lugon,  too,  was 
lost.  Having  got  astray  during  the  ac- 
tion, he  arrived  but  in  time  to  cover  the 
retreat.  At  Martigne,  where  D'Elbee 
was  in  command,  and  again  at  Vihiers, 
while  Henri  was  off  recruiting,  his  name 
had  to  be  cited  constantly  to  encourage 
the  soldiers,  though  he  was  absent  from 
the  field. 

He  stood  in  a  valley  path,  giving  or- 
ders, during  an  obstinate  fight  at  Islar- 


6o 

tigne- Briand.  A  ball  struck  his  right 
hand,  shattering  the  thumb  and  glanc- 
ing to  the  elbow.  He  did  not  stir,  nor 
even  drop  his  pistol.  "  See  if  my  elbow 
bleeds  much,"  he  said  to  his  companion. 
"  No,  M'sieu  Henri."  "  Then  it  is  only 
a  broken  thumb,"  he  replied,  and  went 
on  directing  the  troops.  It  proved  to  be 
an  ugly  and  dangerous  wound ;  it  de- 
prived him,  during  the  month  of  Sep- 
tember, of  his  share  of  three  signal  vic- 
tories won  by  "  the  devils  in  sabots " 
under  Bonchamp  at  Torfou,  Montaigu, 
and  Saint  Fulgent.  Not  long  after,  be- 
fore Laval,  his  arm  limp  and  swollen  in 
a  sling,  Henri  was  attacked  on  a  lonely 
road  by  a  powerful  foot  -  soldier.  He 
seized  the  fellow  by  the  collar  with  his 
left  hand,  and  so  managed  his  horse  with 
his  legs  that  his  struggling  assailant  was 
unable  to  draw  upon  him.  A  dozen 
Vendeans  ran  up,  eager  to  kill  the  man 
who  menaced  their  general.    He  forbade 


it,  as  he  was  sure  to  do.  But  he  check- 
mated his  Goliath  with  his  tongue.  "  Go 
back  to  the  Republicans,"  he  told  him; 
"  say  that  you  were  alone  with  the  chief 
of  the  brigands,  who  had  but  one  arm  to 
use  and  no  weapons,  and  that  you  could 
not  get  the  better  of  him." 

In  addition  to  his  dark  blue  great-coat 
and  his  wide  hat,  Henri  wore  anything 
which  he  found  available,  and  chose,  for 
his  distinctive  mark,  red  handkerchiefs 
of  immemorial  Chollet  make  about  his 
head  and  neck,  and  another  about  his 
waist  to  hold  his  pistols.  It  is  striking 
to  find  him,  the  soul  of  conservatism,  in 
the  identical  dress  of  the  Cordeliers, 
"the  red  brothers  of  Danton,"  cravatted 
and  girdled  in  their  Paris  fashion,  and 
flaunting  the  bonnet  rouge.  The  appro- 
priation of  the  hated  color  must  have 
been  of  malice  prepense,  as  a  bit  of  not 
illegal  bravado,  and  a  slap  of  exquisite 
fun  at  the  tailorish  pomp  and  circum- 


stance  of  war.  Henri  made  a  mountain 
guy  of  himself  to  some  purpose.  Among 
the  Blues  at  Fontenay  it  quickly  became 
a  universal  order  to  fire  at  the  Red  Hand- 
kerchief. The  other  leaders  were  un- 
able to  persuade  him  to  doff  it.  "  They 
know  me  by  that,"  was  his  aggravating 
answer,  "  and  besides,  it  is  so  comfort- 
able!" But  they  adorned  themselves 
quickly  with  the  same  insignia,  and  saved 
him  from  the  sharp-shooters.  Such  was 
the  origin  of  the  officers'  earliest  uni- 
form ;  and  with  their  flapping  boots, 
their  huge  swords,  and  these  floating 
flame-colored  gingham  plaids,  they  must 
indeed  have  resembled  the  "brigands" 
of  their  enemies'  fancy.  Henri  con- 
tinued to  take  pride  in  his  Chollet  tur- 
ban, and  was  apt  to  consider  a  hat,  ex- 
cept on  festal  occasions,  as  a  piece  of 
tautology.  Later,  after  the  conference 
at  Fougeres,  he  adopted  the  white  sash, 
with  its  famous  little  black  knot. 


HOSE  officers  and  civic  ad- 
herents who  encompassed 
the  royal  family  at  Paris, 
between  the  tragic  forsak- 
ing of  Versailles  and  the 
dawn  of  the  regicide  year,  were,  as  well 
they  knew,  standing  under  oak-boughs 
in  a  gathering  storm.  Event  was  tread- 
ing on  the  heels  of  event ;  every  hour 
was  oracular;  it  was  impossible  not  to 
forecast  the  morrow,  and  to  dread  or  defy 
it,  as  habit  might  prompt.  Through  the 
charged  and  purple  air  strange  figures 
were  passing:  Mirabeau,  borne  dead  to 
the  Pantheon,  to  be  eldest  of  its  sleep- 
ers ;  Lafayette,  with  brave  step  and  smile 
of  compromise,  riding  through  the  blue 
national  guards ;  the  Queen,  appearing 
in  white  on  balconies,  calm  before  mobs, 


64 

with  her  firm  fair  arm  about  her  httle 
son ;  Barbaroux  and  Roland  escorting 
Madame  as  she  goes  reluctantly  from 
her  happy  dream-time  in  the  garret  of 
the  dingy  Rue  Saint  Jacques  into  place 
and  authorit}^;  Camille  Desmoulins,  ever 
sauntering  loose-haired,  with  a  soiled  roll 
of  writing,  and  a  sarcasm  not  unsweet 
upon  his  tongue  ;  the  Cheniers ;  Vergni- 
aud ;  Westermann,  with  his  hard,  tena- 
cious intelligence  not  yet  amply  employ- 
ed ;  and  Robespierre,  "  the  last  word  of 
the  Revolution,  which,  thus  early,  no  man 
could  read ;"  regal  maskers,  flown  to  the 
frontiers  and  snared  at  Varennes,  and 
marched  back  to  the  capital  amid  din  of 
sabres  ;  couriers  arriving  with  verifica- 
tions of  the  butcheries  at  Avignon,  and 
bishops  departing,,  after  a  rapturous  Te 
Deum  in  the  cathedral,  each  to  his  seeth- 
ing diocese  ;  stout  foreigners  drinking  in 
the  Faubourg  Saint  Honore,  and  darkly 
prognosticating  ruin  for  this  whole  wild 


65 

smithy  where  so  much  old  iron  was  being 
lighted  and  beaten  into  new  uses ;  Mail- 
lard  and  his  murder-men  of  the  Abbaye, 
walking  yet  peaceably,  but  looming  on 
the  horizon  like  huge  dripping  spectres 
of  the  worst  that  was  to  be ; — such  was 
the  panorama,  such  the  France,  all  of 
which  Henri  de  La  Rochejaquelein  liter- 
ally saw,  and  part  of  which,  belying  the 
adage,  he  was  not.  He,  too,  had  been  at 
the  Cafe  Valois ;  he,  too,  had  watched  on 
the  quays  the  gaming  soldiers  his  col- 
leagues, and  the  knowing  tri-color  de- 
moiselles ;  and  heard  through  his  lonely 
windows,  by  night,  the  mounting  chorus 

of 

"JmoTir  sacre  de  la  pa  trie, 
Conduis,  soutiens  nos  bras  vengeurs  !" 

the  legacy  of  immortal  song  which  a 
Royalist  had  given  to  the  Republic  for- 
ever. But  these  externals  had  no  real 
hold  upon  him.  He  was  no  searcher  of 
the  deep  roots  nor  the  forward-stretch- 


ing  tendrils  of  circumstance.  He  went 
across  the  lesser  Doomsday  as  a  child 
across  the  hostile  streets  of  a  city, 
thinking  always,  but  not  of  the  obvious 
things.  What  he  saw  through  the  medi- 
um of  his  sequestered  soul  were  reeking 
sedition,  experiments  blundering  and 
caring  not  whom  they  hurt,  principles 
despoiling  the  world  of  quiet  and  gentle- 
ness and  "  the  unbought  grace  of  life ;" 
and  he  moved,  indeed,  towards  Burke's 
own  curious  inference,  that  the  Revolu- 
tion was  criminal  because  it  was  unman- 
nerly. He  took  no  time  to  philosophize 
when  the  one  blameless  and  disadvan- 
taged Bourbon  needed  his  sword  ;  it  was 
nothing  to  him  that  pent  -  up  rights, 
burst  abroad,  were  about  to  vindicate 
themselves  terribly  and  justly  in  "  immo- 
lating a  generation  to  make  way  for  an 
idea,"  while  he  saw,  far  more  clearly,  his 
order  injured,  his  religion  handicapped, 
and  the  old  ideals   taught   him  at   his 


67 

mother's  knee  swept  into  the  universal 
dust -heap.  There  were  hundreds  of 
honorable  lives  like  his,  impelled  by  the 
same  hurrying  conscientiousness,  form- 
ing on  either  side  of  the  great  struggle 
from  1789  to  1792:  the  men  who  repre- 
sented the  early  beauty  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, while  yet  it  was  a  "  child  of  many 
prayers."  No  apology  (in  the  primitive 
nor  in  the  perverted  sense  of  the  word) 
need  be  made  for  their  opposing  courses, 
so  soon  to  be  defined ;  it  is  enough  if  we 
wise  landsmen  of  posterity  know  the 
great  current  and  whither  it  tends,  and 
that  we  perceive,  near  shore,  the  forceful 
counter-current  pushing  backward  vic- 
toriously, if  but  for  an  hour,  and  recog- 
nize that  both  are  one  clear  water,  and 
that  the  same  Hand  suffers  them  to  flow. 
Henri  went  home,  not  to  ponder  much, 
but  to  grieve  a  little  and  then  to  fight : 
to  fight  the  strength  of  the  equinoctial 
tide,  even  as  it  proved. 


With  every  foot  of  the  Bocage  he  be- 
came acquainted ;  he  travelled  it  ov^er 
and  over ;  he  was  spun  like  a  thread  of 
destiny  into  and  around  its  level  fields 
and  farms ;  he  crossed  and  re-crossed  its 
fords ;  he  lost  and  won  its  towns ;  he 
held  its  fortunes  for  a  year  in  the  hollow 
of  his  hand ;  his  grave,  like  his  birth, 
was  in  its  bosom.  It  is  small  wonder 
that  a  species  of  folk-lore,  in  his  own 
neighborhood,  has,  in  three  generations, 
grown  up  around  him,  which  makes  it  a 
difficult  thing  to  disentangle  what  is  true 
of  him  from  what  might  as  well  be  true: 
for  the  French  are  not  given,  even  in 
their  gossip,  to  incongruities.  Ever}' 
rustic,  who,  having  served  under  Henri, 
lived  to  startle  a  more  prosaic  world 
with  his  reminiscences,  had  anecdotes  to 
tell  of  him  really  vital  and  precious ;  and 
the  travellers  who  were  able  to  gather 
them  at  first  hand,  like  Monsieur  Eugene 
Genoude  and  Viscount  Francis  Walsh. 


69 

are  yet  to  be  envied.  It  is  known  from 
oral  report  how  he  would  run  any  risk 
for  a  charge  of  his,  were  he,  in  particu- 
lar, a  child  or  a  coward ;  or  how  he 
would  deny  himself  bread  while  one 
mouth  hungered  near  him ;  how  he  was 
a  fatal  apparition,  looming  bare-headed 
from  the  saddle,  pistol  in  hand,  to  those 
who  encountered  him  in  a  charge  :  for 
he  had  a  sure  aim,  and  no  genteel  mis- 
givings as  to  his  present  duty.  Picked 
out  for  the  object  of  many  raids,  he  had 
the  strength  of  nerve  to  save  himself 
repeatedly,  by  blowing  out  the  brains  of 
a  dozen.  When  he  achieved  an  admitted 
advantage,  he  seemed  to  overflow  in- 
stantly with  his  native  kindness  and 
compassion.  His  military  career  was 
less  one  of  thought  and  command  than 
of  manual  killing  and  sparing:  and  in 
that  particular  he  belonged  with  the 
ancient  world,  with  Gideon  and  with 
Hector.    The  endless  patience  which  he 


brought  to  bear  on  his  heart-breaking 
circumstance  and  his  ungovernable  mass 
of  men,  out  -  soars  praise.  Not  once, 
among  the  contradiction,  the  disorder, 
the  stupidity  which  he  deplored,  was  he 
anything  but  just.  This  autumnal  sweet- 
ness of  his  character,  which  he  seemed 
to  have  inherited  in  full  at  Lescure's 
death,  was  its  first  and  last  distinction. 
It  helped  him,  at  an  age  when  moods 
alternate  with  the  pendulum,  to  take 
prosperity  without  pride,  trials  without 
a  plaint.  Young  in  every  fibre,  he  had 
not  a  trace  of  the  severity  of  youth,  its 
raw  dominance,  its  hasty  partial  will. 

As  he  takes  the  eye  from  among  the 
striking  figures  in  Madame  de  La  Roche- 
jaquelein's  Meinoires,  so,  alive,  he  com- 
pelled the  interest  of  on-lookers  and  of 
commentators  who  were  foes.  Jomini, 
in  his  Histoire  Critique,  turns  to  him  with 
insistent  admiration.  Kleber's  reports 
are   filled   with    notes   on   his  scientific 


skill.  It  was  the  opinion  of  Sempre,  af- 
ter the  Vendean  repulse  at  Granville  and 
the  ensuing  movement  which  almost 
cancelled  it,  that  "  Xenophon  himself 
was  not  half  so  clever  as  this  vagabond." 
And  Napoleon,  the  man  whose  attribute 
it  was  to  know  men,  dictating  to  General 
Montholon  at  Saint  Helena,  used  a  sig- 
nificant exclamation  :  "  What  might  he 
not  have  become  I"  Henri's  large  close 
mental  grasp,  his  delighting  straightfor- 
ward talk,  his  prompt  deed,  were  all  of 
a  piece ;  and  they  won  his  great  contem- 
porary from  the  outset.  Nor  had  the 
latter  forgotten,  when  the  crown  was 
upon  his  head,  to  invent  every  means  to 
gain  the  coveted  adherence  of  Louis  de 
La  Rochejaquelein,  who  was  much  of  the 
same  mould. 

Henri,  unlike  Lescure  and  Bonchamp, 
was  no  scholar :  one  might  guess  as 
much  from  his  handwriting,  always  too 
indolent  and  free.     To  one  book,  how- 


ever,  he  clung,  and  after  carrying  it 
about  for  an  interrupted  rereading,  he 
would  put  it  under  his  pillow  :  this  was 
a  Life  of  Turenne.  His  age  and  his 
country  were  surfeited  with  learned  and 
poetic  persons  ;  while  they  were  writing 
things  worthy  to  be  read,  he,  as  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott  would  put  it,  was  doing  things 
worthy  to  be  written  ;  he  was  breathing 
abroad  something  of  the  Greece  crystal- 
izing  silently  in  Andre  Chenier's  brain. 
Shall  we  ascribe  it  to  immunity  from  the 
giant  literature  which  was  the  prelude 
of  the  Revolution  that  he  was  a  very 
simple  youth  indeed,  that  he  believed  in 
God,  and  was  strict  {^'"severe"  is  Madame 
de  La  Rochejaquelein's  word)  in  matters 
touching  his  conscience?  "He  knew 
me  at  Saumur,  when  I  came  on  with 
Cathelineau,"  a  peasant  told  a  stranger, 
"  and  he  spoke  to  me :  '  How  well  it 
goes  with  us  !'  '  Yes,  yes,  so  it  does,'  I 
replied,  'thanks  to  you,  M'sieu   Henri !' 


'  Thanks  unto  God  !'  was  what  he  said." 
His  own  success,  wonderful  in  the  ex- 
treme to  him,  he  preferred  to  charge 
upon  supernatural  agencies.  When  he 
galloped  into  the  guns,  and  caught  no 
one  admiring  him  visibly,  he  took  occa- 
sion to  make  the  sign  of  the  cross  ;  the 
bigger  the  danger,  the  bigger  the  gest- 
ure, according  to  tradition.  Nothing 
was  mere  mechanism  with  him ;  he  was 
a  scorner  of  exaggeration.  His  relig- 
iousness was  in  the  current  of  his  blood. 
It  alone  kept  him  to  the  end  an  optimist : 
one  able  to  leap  into  the  chasm  beyond, 
without  ever  having  had  a  single  specu- 
lation about  it,  nor  a  single  dread. 


f 


ilS: 


HE    autumn  of   1793,  when 


^y^  the  red  flag  was  floating  at 
fW  the  altar  of  the  Fatherland, 
^^  when  the  tombs  at  Saint 
Denis  were  rifled  of  their 
kingly  dust,  and  some  hearts  were  yet 
aching  for  the  fallen  Gironde,  —  this 
memorable  autumn  was  marked  in  the 
west  by  the  c/ioc  on  the  heights  about 
ChoUet,  and  the  tragedy  of  the  passage 
of  the  Loire.  During  the  first  attack 
D'Elbee  and  Lescure  were  borne  help- 
less from  the  field.  The  ensuing  night 
a  council  of  war  was  held,  Stoflflet 
and  Henri  begging  for  leave  to  defend 
the  town,  and  Bonchamp  persistently 
pleading  for  an  expedition  across  the 
river,  in  the  hope  of  obtaining   succor 


and  new  strength  from  the  Bretons,  and 
of  opening  a  northern  seaport  to  the  ex- 
pected co-operation  of  England.  While 
the  debate  was  yet  seething,  the  second 
clash  came,  and  Bonchamp  was  struck 
down.  It  was  a  terrific  battle :  forty 
thousand  peasants  against  forty  -  five 
thousand  tried  and  trained  soldiers  of 
the  line.  "  They  fought  like  tigers," 
brave  Kleber  wrote  to  the  Convention, 
"  but  our  lions  beat  them."  Before  day- 
break on  the  seventeenth  of  October, 
without  any  order  of  advance,  and 
against  the  impassioned  efforts  of  Henri 
and  other  generals,  panic  set  in,  and  the 
air  was  rent  with  a  league  of  cries.  Then 
began  the  mad  rush  for  the  Loire,  and  an 
exodus  comparable  to  nothing  human 
but  that  of  the  Tartar  tribes.  The  man- 
oeuvre, suggested  but  a  little  while  before 
as  a  safeguard,  was  adopted  in  complete 
despair,  and  the  retreat  deteriorated  into 
a  migration.    Countless  families  emptied 


76 

themselves  into  the  rebel  camp ;  a  horde 
of  poor  creatures,  including  the  entire 
population  of  Chollet  and  the  near  bor- 
oughs, flew  to  the  common  centre ; 
women,  babes,  the  aged,  the  sick,  the 
fearful,  hung  darkening- over  the  army, 
like  summer  insects  over  a  pool.  Once 
it  had  started,  nothing  could  hold  back 
the  onward  pressure  of  such  numbers. 
Four  thousand  men  were  detached  un- 
der Talmont  and  sent  to  clear  the  banks 
at  Saint  Florent.  A  whole  people,  their 
homes  burning  behind  them,  thrown 
upon  pauperism,  inevitable  separation, 
and  the  rigors  of  the  coming  winter,  the 
Republican  hosts  advancing  from  all 
sides  to  exterminate  them  ;  Bonchamp, 
on  whose  persuasion  the  fatal  move  was 
undertaken,  on  whose  prudence  the  oth- 
ers relied,  known  to  be  dying ;  Lescure, 
who  had  been  w^ounded  at  La  Trem- 
blaye  in  the  midst  of  his  squadrons,  dy- 
ing also  ;  the  bewildered,  groaning  mul- 


77 

titucle  dropping,  like  the  pallid  passen- 
gers of  the  Styx,  into  the  river-boats,  and 
struggling  from  island  to  island ; — what 
a  spectacle !  The  great  tears  of  anger 
and  sorrow  stood  thick  in  Henri's  eyes. 
When  a  march  could  be  formed,  the  foot- 
soldiery,  with  the  cannon,  were  placed 
at  the  head,  and  the  cavalry  and  picked 
men  brought  up  the  rear.  Between 
them  were  the  fifty  thousand  drags, 
stumbling  along  in  a  lunacy  of  terror, 
and  in  a  muffled  roar  bewailing  their 
bitter  fate,  and  calling  on  Heaven  for 
mercy.  The  habit  of  their  enemies  was 
invariably  to  attack  the  van  or  the  rear : 
— a  mistake  which,  more  than  anything 
else,  prorogued  the  inevitable  end. 

Cathelineau,  the  first,  and,  next  to 
Charette,  the  ablest  commander-in-chief 
of  the  Vendeans,  having  been  mortally 
wounded  before  the  gates  of  Nantes, 
D'Elbee,  by  his  skilful  policy  at  Chatil- 
lon,  had  himself  appointed  to  the  sue- 


78 

cession.  It  was  the  work  of  an  obstinate 
cabal ;  Bonchamp,  by  every  claim,  de- 
served the  election.  But  after  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Loire,  D'Elbee,  in  the  con- 
fusion, was  not  to  be  found.  Lescure, 
besought,  in  his  bed,  to  take  matters  into 
his  own  hands,  immediately  proposed 
that  the  officer  best-beloved  by  all  divi- 
sions of  the  army,  and  best-known  to 
them, Henri  de  La  Rochejaquelein, should 
be  nominated  to  the  vacant  generalship. 
"As  for  me,  should  I  recover,"  added 
Lescure,  "  you  know  I  cannot  quarrel 
with  Henri.  I  shall  be  his  aide-de-camp." 
The  little  senate  met  at  Laval.  Henri, 
never  willing  to  push  himself  forward, 
dissented  hotly.  As  advocate  against 
his  own  claims,  he  made  his  longest 
speech.  He  represented  that  he  had 
neither  age  nor  experience,  that  he  was 
merely  a  fighter,  that  he  had  too  little 
practical  wisdom,  that  he  was  untena- 
cious   of  his   opinions,  that   he   should 


I 


79 

never  learn  how  to  silence  those  who 
opposed  him  :  in  vain.  After  the  ensu- 
ing vote  he  w^as  found  hidden  in  a  corner, 
and  cried  like  the  child  he  was,  on  Les- 
cure's  breast,  for  the  unsought  honor 
thrust  upon  him.  He  was  to  hav^e  no 
further  guardianship  and  support  from 
that  dearest  of  his  friends.  On  the  road 
between  Ernee  and  Fougeres  Lescure 
died,  not  before  a  mighty  pang  was  add- 
ed to  his  passing  by  an  oral  account  of 
the  execution  of  the  Queen.  In  the 
room  where  his  body  lay  Henri  said  to 
his  widow,  "  Could  my  life  restore  him 
to  you,  oh,  you  might  take  it!" 

The  Royalists  nearly  sank  under  this 
second  calamity,  for  Bonchamp,  too,  had 
but  lately  died,  on  the  eighteenth  of  Oc- 
tober. ("  The  news  of  these  two,"  cried 
lively  Barrere  in  the  Convention,  "  is 
better  than  any  victory  !")  His  remains, 
which,  like  Lescure's,  were  carried  for  a 
brief  time  under  the  colors,  were  tempo- 


8o 

rarily  buried  at  Varades.  His  only  son, 
Hermenee,  became  Henri's  special  care. 
In  all  his  trouble  and  preoccupation  he 
was  pathetically  kind  to  the  child,  and 
had  him  sleep  with  him  every  night.  By 
day  Hermenee  rode  with  Henri  on  the 
same  saddle,  or  trotted  in  the  rear-guard, 
beating  his  toy-drum,  haranguing  the  sol- 
diers with  pretty  ardor,  and  remembering 
each  lovingly  by  name.  The  poor  little 
fellow,  weakened  by  his  hardships,  suc- 
cumbed to  the  small-pox,  in  his  mother's 
arms,  at  Saint  Herbelon,  before  the  year 
was  over. 

The  wretched  throng  were  exiled,  as 
completely  as  they  would  have  been  had 
they  crossed  the  Pyrenees.  Seven 
months  of  intense  activity,  seven  months 
of  successful  fight,  even  while  they  were 
surrounded  like  sheep  in  a  pen,  had  re- 
sulted only  in  this :  that  no  single  gene- 
ral, at  his  allotted  post,  had  been  able  to 
beat  back  the  Revolution  from  La  Ven- 


dee;  that  the  restoration  of  the  mon- 
archy, the  remoter  and  greater  object, 
was  more  visionary  and  hypothetical 
than  ever.  They  hurried  northward 
feverishly,  pursued  always  by  an  im- 
mense force,  subject  to  continuous  cold 
rains,  obliged  to  leave  at  every  stopping- 
place  the  wounded  and  the  sick,  the 
women  and  babes,  to  mark  their  trail 
and  to  perish  by  massacre.  Kleber  had 
his  keen  eye  upon  Henri :  "  I  do  not  be- 
lieve he  can  hold  out  long,  away  from 
his  own  country."  But  Henri  proceeded 
to  defeat  the  garrison  at  Chateau- 
Gontier,  to  crush  L'Echelle's  division 
at  Entrammes,  and  to  score  a  double 
triumph  at  Laval.  It  was  at  Chateau- 
Gontier  that  the  venerable  Monsieur  de 
Royrand,  who  had  sustained  the  war  in 
Lower  Poitou  from  the  very  beginning, 
breathed  his  last.  His  regiments  ceased 
firing,  and  mourned  aloud.  Henri  hur- 
ried  into  the  midst  of  them,  his  own 

6 


tears  flowing.  "  Come,  come  !"  he  cried  ; 
"  we  will  weep  and  pray  for  the  dear 
friend  to-morrow.  Let  us  avenge  him 
to-day  !"  Then  he  swooped  like  an  eagle 
on  the  troops  of  the  state,  with  Roy- 
rand's  orphans  at  his  heels. 


HESE  were  the  days  of  what 
the  peasants  called  "the 
reign  of  Monsieur  Henri." 
Power  and  the  opportunity 
of  dictatorship,  which  prove 
the  ruin  of  much  excellence,  seemed  to 
awaken  in  him  only  fresh  virtues.  So 
sound  was  his  temperament,  that  the  less 
unhampered  he  became  the  more  intelli- 
gently he  was  able  to  serve  his  cause ; 
and  his  manner  of  serving,  as  we  know, 
was  not  to  draw  charts  in  his  tent.  In- 
capable of  turning  his  little  finger  to 
benefit  himself,  he  was  a  perennial  bene- 
fit to  all  around  him.  His  glad  irre- 
pressible gusto  leavened  the  spirits  of 
thousands.  Providence,  he  liked  to  think, 
took  care  of  him  while  he  was  needed. 


Now  that  he  had  a  community  depending 
upon  him,  as  if  he  were  a  patriarch  of  old, 
his  conduct  came  to  be  more  and  more 
temperate.  For  his  habitual  rashness, 
criminal  under  other  conditions,  he  ought 
not  at  any  time  to  be  blamed.  A  verse 
from  the  most  masculine  ode  in  English 
literature  might  be  borrowed  to  describe 
La  Rochejaquelein,  who, 

"like  the  three-fork'd  lightning  first 

Breaking  the  clouds  where  it  was  nurst, 
Did  thorough  his  own  side 
His  fiery  way  divide." 

He  must  have  blazed  or  burst.  And  he 
had  exterior  warrant.  It  was  of  the  first 
importance  that  the  generals  should  have 
the  confidence  of  their  curiously  critical 
liegemen ;  and  that  confidence  was  to 
be  won  in  nowise  but  by  the  display  of 
pluck,  the  argument  of  example.  Les- 
cure  and  Bonchamp,  whom  none  will 
accuse  of  recklessness,  pursued,  on  cal- 


( 


85 

culation,  the  same  and  the  only  course 
of  constant  self-exposure  ;  for  to  such 
cruel  tests  did  the  foolish  philosophers 
of  La  Vendee  put  their  worthiest.  Can 
anything  be  more  mar\^ellous  than  that 
an  army  so  handicapped  by  whim  and 
ignorance  should  have  withstood  attack 
at  all  ?  One  by  one  its  governors  and 
guides  were  mown  like  weeds,  who,  had 
they  been  enrolled  in  other  ranks,  would 
have  been  warded  from  the  remote 
approach  of  personal  peril. 

The  only  legitimate  stricture  on  Hen- 
ri's behavior  is  that  he  did  not  compel 
obedience  off  the  field.  It  became 
necessary  even  for  him,  who  was  so  se- 
cure in  the  affections  of  his  volunteers, 
and  who  had  so  much  influence  over 
them,  to  shed  something  besides  persua- 
sion on  the  difficult  crowd  in  his  charge. 
He  made  no  endeavor  to  employ  Stoff- 
let's  verbal  whips  and  goads,  which  never 
failed  to  accomplish  their  object ;  stern- 


86 

ness  was  not  natural  to  him,  and  it  was 
an  art  which  he  somehow  disdained  to 
acquire.  The  fault,  beyond  doubt,  was 
the  outcome  of  his  extreme  youth,  and 
of  his  habit,  even  in  Paris  (and  what  an 
orgy  of  a  Paris  it  was  then  !),  of  mingling 
as  little  as  possible  with  the  social  world, 
the  sole  school  for  the  development  of 
the  defensive  faculties.  Such  a  lack,  in 
such  a  character,  was  predestined  to  be 
righted  with  advancing  years.  While 
the  reproach  existed  it  was  fully  con- 
fessed, and  it  colored  all  his  judgments 
upon  himself :  it  was  entirely  just  that 
he  should  have  deprecated,  as  he  did, 
the  major  responsibilities  urged  upon 
him  in  the  October  of  1793.  Almost 
the  last  words  of  Louis  de  Lescure  to 
his  cousin  were  to  assure  him  that  if  he, 
Lescure,  lived,  his  chief  care  would  be  to 
help  La  Rochejaquelein  overcome  this 
ill-placed  timidity,  which  belied  the  true 
masterfulness    within    him,    and    which 


made  it  impossible  to  curb  factional  in- 
trigue. 

It  is  to  be  observed,  that  throughout 
the  campaign  in  Brittany,  no  blunder 
has  ever  been  imputed  to  Henri.  He 
guessed  at  a  science  to  which  others  had 
made  the  painful  approximation  of 
study.  His  own  vision  was  so  clear,  so 
free  of  prejudice,  that  he  saw  at  once 
what  was  to  be  done.  His  sagacity, 
when  things  were  left  in  his  own  hands, 
was  simply  amazing  :  for  we  do  not  ex- 
pect sagacity  from  dare-devils.  But  he 
had  a  mistaken  humility  which  forbade 
him  to  apply  his  great  force  of  will,  when 
the  question  arose  of  overruling  age  and 
numbers.  His  fear  that  he  should  not 
know  how  to  silence  those  who  opposed 
him  proved  but  too  accurate.  Catheli- 
neau's  death  closed  the  first  of  the  three 
periods  of  the  war,  as  his  own  death 
closed  the  second ;  and  up  to  the  hour 
when  "  the  honest  and  the  perfect  man  " 


ss 

of  Pin-en- Mauges  gave  back  his  great 
spirit,  there  was  no  rivalry  nor  internal 
strife  in  his  camp.  But  by  the  time 
"  the  son  of  Monsieur  de  La  Rochejaque- 
lein  "  stood  up  to  direct  the  graybeards 
of  his  staff,  the  general  concord  about 
him  was  by  several  degrees  less  angelic. 
The  farther  north  the  army  strayed  the 
more  irksome  became  his  position,  for 
his  steadfast  conviction  was  against  the 
expediency  of  trying  to  reach  Granville 
at  all.  When,  after  the  affair  of  Chateau- 
Gontier,  a  unique  opportunity  arose  to 
retrace  the  march  and  re-establish  head- 
quarters in  the  Bocage,  it  went  hard  in- 
deed with  Henri  that  none  would  listen 
to  him.  Again,  at  Laval,  he  would  have 
pushed  through  Kleber's  disorganized 
forces,  towards  the  safe  though  smoking 
lab3Tinths  at  home ;  but,  misled  by 
some  vague  encouraging  rumor,  the  ma- 
jority clamored  to  push  on.  Through- 
out this  unhappy  time,  when  his  light 


89 

heart  was  sickening  with  rebuffs  and  de- 
lays, there  came  to  him  a  growing  pru- 
dence and  calm.  He  learned  to  cover 
a  rout,  to  reap  the  full  fruit  of  a  victo- 
ry. Many  of  the  elder  subofficers  who 
watched  him  were  touched  and  com- 
forted, during  the  hot  fourteen  hours 
at  Chateau -Gontier,  where  he  forbore 
his  old  impetuous  charges,  but  rode 
close  to  his  column,  clearing  up  the  con- 
fusion, hindering  the  bravest  from  ad- 
vancing alone,  and  holdingthe  disciplined 
musketeers  together  ;  so  as  to  remind 
more  than  one  of  the  tradition  of  Conde, 
in  his  invincible  youth,  at  Rocroy. 


f 


-^; 


HE  blue  sea-horizon  showed 
no  sign  of  an  English  sail. 
though  the  firing  was  heard 
j^j  at  Jersey;  there  were  tid- 
ings neither  from  "  le  roi 
Georges'  nor  from  the  absent  princes  of 
France.  When  the  insurgents,  driven 
forth  from  Granville  by  flame  and  sword, 
started  to  return,  they  found  the  country 
which  they  had  just  conquered  reoccu- 
pied  by  their  enemies.  They  had  to  con- 
test their  way  back  to  the  Loire-barrier,  as 
if  they  were  breaking  virgin  ground.  At 
Avranches  there  was  a  mutiny,  caused  by 
a  rather  ridiculous  suspicion  of  treason  in 
Talmont  and  the  ambitious  Abbe  Bern- 
ier.  At  Pontorson,  where  the  streets  had 
been  choked  with  dead  for  many  days, 


the  army  routed  the  Blues ;  Foret,  the 
first  brand  in  the  burning  at  Saint  Flo- 
rent,  fell  there  ;  no  quarter  was  given  nor 
taken.  A  tremendous  battle  followed  at 
Dol.  Talmont  sustained  the  siege  with 
superb  courage.  Not  a  few  of  the  fight- 
ing corps  were  sinking  already  from 
homesickness,  exhaustion,  and  hunger. 
While  there  was  a  single  squad  to  stand 
by  him,  Henri  fought  like  a  lion ;  and 
then,  alone  and  seemingly  numb  with 
despair,  he  turned  about,  with  folded 
arms,  and  faced  the  battery.  It  was  ow- 
ing wholly  to  the  exhortations  of  Abbe 
Doussin  of  Sainte-Marie-de-Rhe,  and  to 
the  resolution  of  the  women,  that  the 
troops  rallied  nobly  and  wrested  three 
successive  victories  from  their  foes. 
Yet  again  would  Henri  have  struck  out 
as  far  as  Rennes,  thence  in  a  straight 
line  south  ;  and  yet  again  he  was  forced 
to  see  the  acceptance  of  a  crazy  project, 
whereby  the  roundabout  route  of  Octo- 


92 

ber  was  to  be  retraced  inch  by  inch. 
"  You  deny  me  in  conference  ;  you  aban- 
don me  on  the  field  !"  he  could  well  say, 
with  something  like  wrath  flushing  his 
young  cheek.  The  highways  were  one 
horrible  open  grave  ;  the  winter  weather 
was  cruelly  cold  ;  desertions  set  in  ;  fam- 
ine and  pestilence  came  upon  them.  At 
Angers,  Henri  would  fain  have  quickened 
the  lagging  spirits  of  his  old  comrades ; 
the  guns  having  made  a  small  breach  in 
the  town -walls,  he,  with  Forestier  of 
Pommeraie-sur- Loire,  who  was  never  far 
from  his  side,  and  two  others,  flung 
themselves  into  it.  Not  a  soul  rallied  to 
their  defence.  A  miserable  huddled 
mass,  the  army  fell  back  on  Bauge,  and 
now,  unable  to  seize  a  permanent  advan- 
tage, ran  hither  and  thither,  ever  away 
from  the  Loire.  At  the  bridge  of  La 
Fleche,  Henri,  fording  the  stream  with 
a  small  picked  body  of  horsemen,  over- 
came the  garrison  by  an  adroit  move. 


93 

and  there  was  a  flicker  of  great  hope. 
But  the  peasants  who  began  the  war 
were  weary,  weary.  Too  truly  the  tide 
of  disaster  had  set  in. 

In  the  city  of  Mans,  at  the  end  of  the 
only  road  open,  were  food,  warmth,  and 
rest.  The  exiles  ate,  drank,  and  slept ; 
slept,  drank,  and  ate  again.  It  seemed 
as  if  nothing  could  rouse  them  more. 
Marceau,  Miiller,  Tilly,  and  Westermann's 
light  cavalry  were  closing  on  them. 
Prostrate  and  drunken,  the  Royalist  sur- 
vivors lay  inert  as  stones.  But  Henri's 
frantic  energy  ("  he  was  like  a  madman," 
says  Madame  de  La  Rochejaquelein) 
once  more  assembled  a  desperate  hand- 
ful, under  himself,  Marigny,  Forestier, 
and  the  Breton,  Georges  Cadoudal.  A 
bitter  and  awful  fight  it  was — a  scene  of 
din  and  smoke  and  blind  tumult,  surging 
about  the  bloody  gates  by  moonlight. 
Twice  Westermann  wavered  and  charged 
again.     Two-thirds  of  the  forlorn  rem- 


94 

nant  of  the  journeying  army  laid  down 
their  lives.  In  the  deserted  town  thou- 
sands of  old  men,  women,  and  children 
were  slaughtered,  amid  jeers  and  fury 
and  the  patter  of  grape-shot.  Exhaust- 
ed, and  with  a  heart  like  lead  within 
him,  the  commander-in-chief  spurred  to 
the  side  of  the  widowed  Marchioness  of 
Lescure,  who,  seated  on  horseback,  hung 
at  the  outskirts  of  the  forces.  (Madame 
de  Bonchamp,  under  the  same  affec- 
tionate protection  of  La  Rochejaquelein 
and  D'Autichamp,  had  been  ordered, 
with  her  two  little  ones,  to  withdraw). 
She  took  his  hand  solemnly.  "  I  thought 
you  were  dead,  Henri,"  she  sighed— and 
her  sequence  of  speech  was  worthy  both 
of  him  and  of  her,  "  for  we  are  beaten." 
"  Indeed,  I  wish  I  were  dead,"  he  an- 
swered. He  knew  that  La  Vendee  had 
had  its  death-blow  before  him. 

So  ended  the  march  into  Brittany.    No 
coward  Bourbon  appeared  to  lead  and 


95 

comfort  his  believers  ;  the  emigrant  aris- 
tocracy, "effeminated  by  a  long  peace," 
and  scattered  among  the  European  capi- 
tals, shrunk  from  reviving  their  own  faint- 
ing cause ;  the  imperfect  overtures  with 
Pitt  and  Dundas,  until  too  late,  were  of  no 
avail.  The  Vendeans  were  forty  leagues 
from  home,  famished,  diseased,  betrayed, 
burdened  with  a  host  of  the  useless  and 
the  weak;  and  let  it  be  written  that  in 
this  plight  they  took  twelve  cities,  won 
seven  battles,  destroyed  more  than  twen- 
ty thousand  Republicans,  and  captured 
one  hundred  cannon.  It  is  a  wonderful 
two  months'  record :  a  failure  such  as 
bemeans  most  conquests.  And  while 
Maine  and  the  Breton  country  were 
overrun,  when  there  were  so  many  to 
nurse  and  shelter,  so  many  mouths  to 
feed,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  no  pillage  was 
legalized.  La  Vendee  paid  its  last  penny 
for  what  it  took,  and  when  that  was  spent 
issued  notes  in  the  King's  name,  payable 


at  a  four-and-a-half  per  cent,  interest  at 
the  Restoration. 

For  the  last  time  Henri  led  a  masterly 
retreat  through  Craon  and  Saint  Mars, 
too  rapid,  alas  !  for  the  dying  feet  of 
many.  The  Loire  was  to  be  recrossed 
at  Ancenis  on  the  sixteenth  of  December. 
The  Republican  troops  were  on  the  far- 
ther side  and  all  about  ;  not  so  much  as 
a  raft  was  to  be  hired  for  pawns.  Two 
pleasure-boats  were  seized  on  adjacent 
ponds  and  carried  to  the  river.  Henri, 
Stofiiet,  and  La  Ville-Bauge  in  one,  young 
De  Langerie  and  eighteen  men  in  the 
other,  succeeded  in  launching  themselves, 
with  the  intention  of  capturing  and  tow- 
ing back  some  hay-laden  skiffs  on  the  op- 
posite shore.  The  current  was  rapid  and 
strong ;  the  patrols  opened  fire ;  a  gun- 
boat descended  the  channel  and  sank 
the  skiffs ;  the  mournful  peasants,  sep- 
arated from  their  generals,  lost  the 
chance  of  following,  and  disbanded  in 


97 

universal  disorder  and  terror.  The 
army  Catholic  and  Royal,  driven  back 
on  Nort,  and  relying  on  Fleuriot  as  its 
provisionary  commander,  saw  Henri  de 
La  Rochejaquelein  no  more. 


f 


^:^(^(^HE  fugitives,  fortunately, 
41^J  "/^Ji^  landed  in  safety,  and  wan- 
i^<i  \m^  dered  all  day  through  the 
^^^^^^  fields.  The  Republic,  an- 
gered at  the  strategies  that 
so  long  held  its  strength  at  bay  from 
the  footpaths,  hedges,  and  queer  monot- 
onous bush-places  which  had  provided 
shelter  to  the  rebels  and  pitfalls  to  its 
own  baffled  soldiery,  was  literally  clear- 
ing the  neighborhood  out,  and  burning 
east  and  west  down  to  the  very  grass. 
The  houses  were  in  ashes ;  the  inhabit- 
ants had  taken  to  the  woods ;  the  lowing 
of-  the  homeless  cattle  filled  the  wind. 
Desolation  yet  more  complete,  a  des- 
olation known  to  wolves  and  carrion- 
crows,   was    to   fall    upon    La   Vendee. 


99 

After  twenty-four  hours,  traversing  sev- 
eral parishes  and  meeting  no  sign  of  life, 
Henri  and  his  companions  found  a  lately- 
deserted  barn,  and  threw  themselves  on 
the  straw.  The  farmer  stole  in  from  the 
thicket  to  tell  them  that  the  Blues  were 
on  the  trail.  "We  may  be  murdered, 
but  we  must  sleep,"  was  the  response. 
They  were  incapable  of  resistance.  The 
Blues,  probably  sent  out  from  Chollet 
by  the  tireless  Poche-Durocher,  came 
promptly.  They  were  also  a  small  party, 
apparently  greatly  fatigued,  and  they  lay 
down  with  their  guns  on  the  same  heap 
of  straw,  not  two  yards  away,  and  de- 
parted, unsuspecting,  ere  dawn.  Their 
poor  bedfellows,  thankful  for  their  im- 
munity, crept  forth  and  roamed  on. 
They  would  have  perished,  had  they 
not,  with  the  strength  of  despair,  at- 
tacked a  relay,  and  seized  bread  and 
meat.  They  had  news  by  chance  of 
the   last   flash   of  Vendean   courage   at 


Savenay,  under  Fleuriot  and  Marigny, 
when  the  hostile  cannon  boomed  AiJien 
to  the  long  psalm  of  heroic  pain.  Out 
of  nearly  one  hundred  thousand  who 
crossed  the  Loire  the  season  preceding, 
less  than  seven  thousand  remained. 

The  little  party  disbanded.  Those 
who  accompanied  Henri  reached  Bois- 
vert  de  Combrand,  and  passed  a  mel- 
ancholy Christmas  with  Mademoiselle 
de  La  Rochejaquelein,  still  concealed 
and  in  solitude.  Here  Henri,  who  was 
not  well,  fell  into  the  deepest  dejection 
he  had  ever  known,  thinking  still  of 
Mans  and  of  the  friends  gone  before 
him,  thinking  more  of  the  hopeless  to- 
morrow, now  that  the  chartered  Terror, 
a  tightening  ring  of  myriad  evil  faces, 
led  by  Carrier  and  Francastel,  was  clos- 
ing in  on  the  wretched  west.  His  aunt, 
the  best  stoic  of  a  stoic  family,  roused 
him  from  his  lethargy.  She  w#uld  have 
him   leave   her.  and   risk   himself  once 


again.  "  If  thou  diest,  Henri,"  she  said, 
with  the  reticence  which,  in  her,  was  rich 
with  meaning,  "  surely  thou  hast  my  es- 
teem as  well  as  my  regret."  This  was 
the  sort  of  godspeed  which  could  not 
fail  to  influence  him.  He  went,  at  this 
time,  to  La  Durbelliere  alone,  perhaps 
conscious  that  it  was  his  solemn  farewell 
look  at  the  woods  dear  to  his  infancy.  A 
detachment  of  Blues  dogged  him.  He 
heard  the  hoofs  in  time  to  save  himself. 
His  neglected  arm,  causing  him  much 
suffering,  was  still  in  a  sling.  Always 
light-footed  and  firm  of  muscle,  he 
swung  himself  up  as  best  he  could  to 
the  ruined  lintel  of  the  court -yard 
gate,  and  dropping  inside  the  wall, 
without  dislodging  a  stone,  he  lay  flat, 
and  watched  his  fowlers  debate,  pass 
under,  and  clatter  off,  without  their 
bird.  This  opportune  reminder  of  how 
much  he  was  still  sought  and  feared,  de- 
termined his  immediate  action.     Noth- 


ing  but  the  jaws  of  the  guillotine  await- 
ed him  if  he  failed. 

He  learned  that  while  Stofflet  was  al- 
ready bravely  combating  in  the  recesses 
of  the  Bocage,  Charette  was  advancing 
towards  Maulevrier.  Chafing  to  be  sep- 
arated from  the  rallying  men,  Henri  and 
his  comrades  set  out  on  the  twenty- 
eighth  of  December,  walking  all  night, 
to  reach  the  camp.  Charette  was  break- 
fasting in  his  tent.  He  received  Henri 
coldly,  nor  did  he  ask  him  to  the  table. 
They  had  some  conversation,  and  the 
younger  general  withdrew  to  the  house 
of  a  neighbor  for  refreshment.  When 
the  drums  began  to  beat,  Charette  cross- 
ed over  to  the  spot  where  Henri  was 
standing.  "You  will  follow  me.^"  he 
asked.  Henri  made  a  foolish  and  haugh- 
ty answer :  "  T  am  accustomed  to  be  fol- 
lowed I"  and  turned  away.  Here  was 
an  instance  of  the  jealousy  and  disunion 
which  had  affected  the  chiefs  of  the  in- 


I 


surrection.  Though  Henri  was  the  le- 
gitimate commander  of  all  the  forces  of 
the  main  army,  Charette  had  a  rather 
ignoble  precedent  in  his  favor,  inasmuch 
as  his  little  legion  of  the  Marais  had 
never  been  fused  in  the  main  army  ;  and 
a  long  despotism,  pure  enough  in  its 
purpose,  had  made  him  averse  to  any 
compromise.  It  seems  scarcely  credible 
that,  from  Cathelineau's  time  onward, 
Charette  had  ruled  in  Lower  Poitou 
his  own  schismatical  twenty  thousand, 
which  never  crossed  the  Loire,  which 
never  ev^en  co-operated  with  the  other 
forces,  save  at  Nantes,  where  they  were 
beaten  by  Beysser,  and  at  Lugon,  where 
they  were  beaten  by  Tuncq.  Could  the 
two  have  agreed  to  march  together  on 
the  capital,  the  counter-revolution.  Na- 
poleon declared,  would  have  set  in  nearly 
twenty  years  sooner. 

The  peasants,  flocking  meanwhile  from 
the  environs  to  join  Charette,  crowded 


about  with  welcoming  shouts  of  "  M'sieu 
Henri !"  before  he  had  so  much  as  spo- 
ken. He  was  pleased,  as  they  were  ;  his 
eager  spirit  revived ;  he  left  the  Cheva- 
lier to  his  own  devices  in  his  own  coun- 
ty. Assembling  the  new  battalion  at 
Neuvy,  he  marched  all  night,  and  carried 
a  Republican  post  eight  leagues  distant. 
Then  began  his  most  indefatigable  mi- 
nor campaign.  He  attacked  remote 
points  to  prevent  surmise  ;  he  dropped 
dovyn  on  widely-scattered  garrisons;  he 
harassed  pickets,  captured  provisions, 
convoys,  and  horses ;  he  intercepted 
Cordelier's  rear-guards  on  perilous  roads. 
His  name  was  in  everybody's  mouth  at 
Paris ;  he  spread  fresh  fear  abroad  with 
every  success  of  these  wild  days.  At 
Salboeuf  Castle  and  in  Vezins  his  aston- 
ishing boldness  sprang  into  final  play. 
He  was  wise  in  not  yet  collecting  his 
men,  and  hazarding  a  general  contest. 
His  troop  of  eight  hundred  increasing 


daily,  he  became,  b}'-  sheer  thrust  and 
parry,  master  of  the  surrounding  coun- 
try ;  and  at  last  he  prepared  to  besiege 
Mortagne  and  Chatillon.  His  head- 
quarters were  in  the  forest  of  Vezins ; 
his  house  was  a  hut  of  boughs.  About 
it  he  went  and  came,  a  familiar  figure  in 
disguise,  with  long  fair  clustering  hair, 
his  arm  in  a  rough  sling,  a  great  woollen 
cap  and  peasant's  blouse  for  his  regi- 
mentals, the  little  symbolic  heart  worn 
outside,  as  of  old.  He  kept  his  ad- 
herents, poor  and  threadbare  like  him- 
self, continually  under  exercise.  Tidings 
came,  too,  to  cheer  them  all,  that  in  the 
north  the  Chouans  were  aroused. 

It  was  the  twenty-eighth  of  January, 
1794.  Henri  had  a  skirmish  at  Nouaille, 
and  won.  After  the  enemy  were  routed, 
he  saw,  far  to  the  right  of  his  little  army, 
two  grenadiers  stooping  behind  a  bush. 
Some  who  were  with  him  aimed  at  them. 
He  bade    them    desist ;    he   wished    to 


io6 

question  them.  He  went  forward,  alone, 
with  the  Vendean  formula  :  "  Surrender 
and  be  spared  !"  A  voice  from  his  own 
ranks,  either  not  heard  or  not  heeded, 
warned  him  to  stop  short.  He  was  rid- 
ing a  richly-caparisoned  horse  which  he 
had  seized,  and  he  had  been  able  that 
morning  to  resume  his  general's  coat 
and  sash — things  which  made  him  con- 
spicuous and  proclaimed  him  aloud ;  for 
one  of  the  Blues,  recognizing  him,  with 
inconceivable  celerity  rose  and  fired. 
Henri  had  put  out  his  hand,  with  a  sud- 
den sense  of  danger,  to  disarm  his  assail- 
ant; but  on  the  instant,  and  without  a 
cry,  he  fell  from  his  saddle,  dead. 


I 


HE  legend  of  Henri  de  La 
Rochejaquelein  did  not  end 
with  his  Hfe.  Says  the 
Count  of  C ,  an  emi- 
grant (author  of  the  graph- 
ic and  erratic  pamphlet  entitled  Un 
Sejour  de  Dix  Mots  e7i  Frajzce) :  "It 
was  in  a  prosperous  hour,  and  shortly 
after  the  fortunate  expedition  of  which 
I  have  been  speaking,  that  I  had  the 
pleasure  of  joining  the  Royalist  army. 
On  every  side  I  saw  tears  only,  and  I 
heard  but  sighs  :  Henri  had  lately  per- 
ished on  the  field  of  honor."  From  this 
anonymous  gentleman  comes  fragmen- 
tary testimony  on  a  subject  once  of  some 
mystery  and  conjecture.  He  had  em- 
braced, or  helped  to  create,  a  rumor  that 


a  woman  headed  the  young  chief's  troops 
as  soon  as  he  had  fallen.  He  declares 
that,  unwilling  to  survive  him,  yet  burn- 
ing to  avenge  him,  she  flung  herself  upon 
the  advancing  Blues,  and  so  expired. 
And  he  lends  her,  moreover,  the  soldier- 
ly distinction  of  reposing  by  her  hero 
henceforward.     Now,  as  the   Count   of 

C is  the  only  one   in  the  world  to 

print  this  story,  it  may  be  worth  while 
to  quote,  for  the  sake  of  contradict- 
ing it,  a  passage  of  that  cloying  racial 
eloquence  which  has  never  the  Saxon 
shame  of  speaking  a  little  more  than  it 
feels :  "And  thou,  O  La  Roche  jaquelein, 
thou  the  Rinaldo  of  the  new  Crusade, 
the  terror  of  infidels  and  the  hope  of 
Christians,  thou  whom  nature  had  dow- 
ered with  so  much  worth  and  so  much 
charm  !  look  down  upon  the  tears  of  thy 
brethren-in-arms ;  listen  to  the  sorrow- 
ings of  the  whole  army  ;  see  the  glorious 
tomb   raised  to  thy   memory;   bid   thy 


log 

spirit  hover  nigh  among  the  cypresses, 
to  count  the  trophies  which  thy  victori- 
ous comrades  hang  there  day  by  day, 
the  garlands  which  thy  countrywomen, 
fair  and  sad,  wreathe  there  forever  ;  hear 
the  hymns  sung  for  thy  sake  ;  watch  the 
young  and  buoyant  legion  sworn  to  per- 
petuate thy  name  and  to  accomplish  thy 
vengeance ;  read  the  inscriptions  which 
passers-by  grave  on  the  trees  in  memory 
of  thee ;  rejoice  to  know  that  thy  sweet 
friend  sleeps  at  thy  side,  wept,  cherished, 
reverenced,  less  because  she  was  lovely, 
good,  and  bright  than  because  she  was 
once  thy  heart's  happiness  and  thy  tri- 
umph's pulse  and  centre;  ah  I  behold 
and  consider  all  these  things  at  once, 
and  let  the  palm  vfhich  is  thine  in  Heav- 
en be  set  about  and  made  fairer,  if  that 
can  be,  with  all  the  bays  won  well  of  old 
of  earth,"  The  soft  music  of  this  ex- 
tract, crossed  with  appeals  to  the  super- 
mundane vanity  of  the  most  modest  of 


mortals,  is  a  sufficient  voucher  that  with 
the  real  La  Rochejaquelein  it  has  no 
commerce  whatever.  It  was  indeed  true 
that  some  martial  girl,  leading  a  compa- 
ny during  the  winter,  received  her  death- 
blow in  the  neighborhood  of  Tremen- 
tines.  The  nonsense  of  her  being  Henri's 
sweetheart  probably  owed  its  origin  to 
the  same  singular  Republican  inventive- 
ness which,  long  after  the  fight  of  Vrine 
which  laid  Jeanne  Robin  low,  continued 
to  call  her  Jeanne  de  Lescure  and  sister 
of  her  commander,  who  might  have 
wished  any  sister  of  his,  did  such  exist, 
to  be  as  pure  and  as  brave. 

There  are  instances,  in  the  long  deal- 
ings of  eternity  with  time,  when  a  man 
is  given  whose  life  is  an  imagination  not 
to  be  matched  in  the  arts  ;  but  such  a 
one  is  usually  spoiled,  like  Icarus,  by  the 
heats  of  an  alien  planet :  we  cannot  take 
him  as  he  is;  we  must  needs  relax  and 
refashion  him,  and  make  of  the  abstract 


idyll  a  sitjet  theatriqiie.  Henri  de  La 
Rochejaquelein,  zigzagging  in  the  teeth 
of  the  enemy,  doing  deeds  with  his  own 
hands  which  are  not  common  in  salons ; 
Henri,  with  his  slender  height,  his  shy 
caressing  voice  and  smile,  having  no  ten- 
derer talisman  to  carry  than  the  sign  of 
the  cross,  no  parting  look  at  anything 
more  responsive  than  a  torn  white  flag", — 
such  a  Henri,  jarring  with  prescriptive 
ideas,  calls  for  reform.  It  is  ungracious 
that  a  chevalier  of  twenty  should  have 
no  leisure  for  a  personal  romance ;  and 
therefore,  for  his  own  credit's  sake,  that 
he  may  remain  a  consistent  and  compre- 
hensible chevalier,  kind  gossip  makes 
him  the  gift  of  a  lady !  almost  as  beautiful 
there  as  Briseis  by  Agamemnon.  Nay; 
more  sincere  tradition  must  leave  him 
as  he  was,  with  no  true-love  yet  at  his 
side.  For  many  years,  under  the  boughs 
of  Brissoniere  and  Haie  Bureau,  there 
was  some  one,  verily,  to  share  the  hal- 


lowed  six  feet  of  ground  with  Henri  ; 
some  one  sleeping  quietly  as  the  child 
Hermenee  in  old  days,  while  yet  over 
the  two  virginal  hearts  their  common 
doom  was  hanging:  the  bride  of  the 
irony  of  this  world,  the  ungrateful  miscre- 
ant who  had  slain  him. 

When  the  Vendeans,  transported  with 
fury,  rushed  forward  and  cut  the  gren- 
adier down,  there  was  in  the  air  the 
noise  of  an  approaching  hostile  column. 
In  the  utmost  distress  the  detachment 
at  Nouaille,  to  whose  command  StofBet 
now  succeeded,  enjoined  it  upon  a  trusty 
farmer  to  bury  their  chief  in  a  hasty 
grave.  They  would  not  have  the  gren- 
adier parted  from  him,  that  his  uniform 
might  be  a  silent  defence  against  profa- 
nation and  conceal  the  identity  of  Henri, 
who,  stripped  of  his  own  insignia,  had 
the  enemy's  cap  and  cockade  drawn  over 
his  forehead.  Thrice  were  the  two 
moved   from   pit   to   pit   in   the   lonely 


neighborhood  a  mile  or  two  from  Chol- 
let,  and  ahvays  by  the  loyal,  secret,  and 
shrewd  hands  of  the  farmer  Girard. 

Madame  de  Sapinaud  de  Bois-Huguet 
says  that  the  Royalists  at  large  supposed 
Henri  to  have  been  seriously  hurt  only, 
and  carried  to  a  place  of  safety,  up  to 
the  treaty  of  peace  signed  by  Sapinaud 
and  Charette.  This  allegation  alone 
would   confound  the  ready  rhetoric  of 

the  Count  of  C and  the  "  glorious 

tomb"  which  never  existed.  Great  con- 
fusion as  to  the  date  of  Henri's  death  is 
found  in  all  contemporary  accounts, 
caused  by  the  prolonged  lack  of  calen- 
dars; and  uncertainty  of  the  fact  itself 
bewildered  those  interested  without. 
Henri's  mother  knew  nothing  of  her 
loss  until  the  following  summer.  Mean- 
while Stofflet  temporarily  carried  on 
energetic  operations  in  his  colleague's 
name.  The  rumor  of  the  truth  reached 
Paris   slowly,  and    it   bred    so  great   a 


doubt  in  Turreau's  mind  that  he  wrote 
Cordelier  to  secure  proof,  by  discover- 
ing and  digging  up  the  body.  Thanks 
to  the  foresight  of  others,  no  such  in- 
dignity befell  what  was  Henri.  But  how 
little  Turreau  recognized  the  splendid 
oblique  flattery  of  this  order,  which,  as 
Cretineau-Joly  remarks,  was  accorded 
only  once  before  in  history,  and  then  by 
the  Romans  to  Hannibal ! 

In  1816,  twenty-two  years  after,  by  the 
piety  of  Mademoiselle  Louise  de  La 
Rochejaquelein,  upheld  by  the  most 
minute  and  accurate  converging  testi- 
mony of  eye-witnesses,  the  remains  of 
her  brother,  easily  recognizable  by  the 
tall  frame  and  the  bullet-hole  through 
the  head,  were  officially  disinterred,  and 
laid  under  the  altar  of  Saint  Sebastian, 
in  the  old  church  of  Saint  Peter  at 
Chollet.  And  within  the  year,  the  centre 
of  a  solemn  and  moving  spectacle,  borne 
by  his  former  comrades  and  the  returned 


J 


"5 

exiles  of  his  family,  amid  the  muffled 
music  of  the  march,  the  salutation  of  the 
Latin  liturgy,  and  the  proud  rapture  of 
public  tears,  Henri  de  La  Rochejaquelein 
was  brought  home  to  the  parish  ceme- 
tery of  Saint  Aubin  de  Baubigne.  He  was 
buried  at  the  right  hand  of  his  brother 
Louis,  who,  with  another  Cathelineau 
and  another  Charette,  had  died  at  his 
post  in  June  of  1815,  just  before  Water- 
loo, at  the  head  of  the  Vendean  army 
raised  to  oppose  the  Emperor  Napoleon. 
"Accident,"  says  Genoude  very  sweetly, 
"  took  upon  herself  the  waiting  of  their 
epitaphs,  and  sowed  in  abundance  over 
their  dust  what  is  known  as  the  Achilles- 
flower."  "  That  is  more  touching  to 
me,"  adds  Madame  de  Genlis,  in  a  note 
to  the  Menioires  of  Madame  de  Bon- 
champ,  "  than  the  legendary  laurel  which 
sprung  from  Virgil's  grave." 

Again,  in  1857,  all  the  precious  dust  in 
that  little  tomb  was  gathered  into  the 


ii6 

vault  of  the  new  church  near,  where 
Henri  lies  with  very  many  of  his  high- 
hearted kindred ;  and  with  the  venerated 
gentlewoman  who  was  his  cousin  both 
by  her  first  marriage  and  by  birth,  and 
who  became,  after  his  death,  his  brother's 
wife:  Victoire  de  Donnissan,  his  junior 
by  three  months,  his  dear  friend  of  the 
camp  and  the  fireside,  his  survivor  of 
over  sixty  years.  In  the  still  aisle- 
chapel  above  them,  the  rich  light  of  a 
memorial  window  slides  down  on  del- 
icate sculptured  marbles,  through  the 
figures  of  the  dying  Maccabees;  and 
around  the  walls,  graven  like  a  triumphal 
scroll,  is  the  cry  of  the  same  Hebrew 
martyrs  that  it  is  far,  far  better  to  fall  in 
battle,  than  to  let  ruin  come  upon  the 
things  that  are  holy.  The  spotless  name 
of  La  Rochejaquelein  must,  with  the  ebb 
of  this  century,  be  withdrawn  from 
among  men  ;  but  whoso  fears  for  it  is 
not  wise.     Every  villager  to-day,  passing 


the  low  sepulchral  outer  door  between 
Le  Rabot  and  the  inn,  affectionately 
raises  his  cap,  and,  walking  in  the  ways 
of  his  fathers,  forgets  not  the  prayer, 
which,  as  some  yet  think  with  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  is  "  more  noble  than  a 
histo^^" 


HE  strength  and  beauty  of 
the  cause  vanished  with 
Henri.  The  war  did  not 
end  for  more  than  a  twelve- 
month ;  fresh  recruits  car- 
ried it  on  with  wonderful  persistence 
and  pluck,  under  Charette,  still  in  the 
Marais,  Stofflet  in  the  interior,  and 
the  Chouan  leaders  in  Brittany.  But 
towards  the  close,  itself  the  disciple  of 
accursed  experience,  it  became  merely 
"a  war  of  ruffians,  carried  on  by  treach- 
ery," and  accomplished  in  carnage  and 
wrath  ;  its  last  flutter  on  Quiberon  sands, 
its  last  allaying,  far  gentler  than  any  an- 
ticipation of  it,  from  the  steady  hand  of 
General  Hoche. 
"So  quick  bright  things  come  to  confusion  !" 


119 

The  Vendean  captains  were  patriots,  as 
is  well  said  in  the  preface  to  Mr.  George  J. 
Hill's  admirable  little  book,"whose/<2/r/<2: 
was  not  of  this  world,"  Cathelineau,  with 
his  thirty- six  kinsmen,  Bonchamp  and 
Lescure,  gloriously  perished  while  yet 
hope  was  high ;  D'Elbee,  in  a  sick-chair 
in  his  own  garden,  laden  with  abuse,  and 
bearing  himself  gallantly,  was  shot  at 
Noirmoutiers ;  Mondj^on  and  other  faith- 
ful youths  "died  into  life"  at  Angers, 
bound  in  couples  like  dogs  ;  Stofflet  paid 
the  wages  of  his  exceeding  loyalty  in  the 
same  rocky  town  ;  Bernard  de  Marigny 
was  cut  off  in  his  prime  by  the  acquies- 
cence of  Stofflet,  who  was  under  an  evil 
influence,  and  by  the  orders  of  Charette, 
to  the  bitter  sorrow,  afterwards,  of  the 
former;  Charette  himself,  having  made 
terms  to  his  advantage  in  March  of  1795, 
at  Nantes,  and  renewing  hostilities  for 
what  he  thought  to  be  sufficient  cause, 
though  offered  a  thousand  pounds  and 


free  passage  to  England  for  his  good- 
will, kept  up  to  the  last  the  unequal 
struggle  with  Travot,  and,  closing  a  ca- 
reer of  signal  splendor,  was  taken  and 
put  to  death,  lion-stanch,  with  a  salute 
to  the  King  upon  his  lips.  As  soon  as 
his  grave  was  dug,  General  Hoche  with- 
drew his  forces.  The  war  was  finished. 
It  is  the  word  of  homage  to  be  spoken 
of  the  Vendeans,  that  they  fought  long 
with  honor  and  with  pity,  in  the  face 
of  unnameable  brutality  and  treachery. 
During  the  first  Royalist  occupation  of 
Chollet,  when  it  was  for  a  while  Cathel- 
ineau's  gay  and  free  little  capital,  full  of 
festivity  and  transient  peace,  the  public 
treasury,  known  to  be  packed,  was  not 
touched.  Tributes  to  facts  of  this  kind 
are  to  be  gathered  from  the  pages  of 
every  hostile  or  neutral  annalist.  And 
Madame  de  La  Rochejaquelein  recalled, 
for  the  amusement  of  another  generation, 
her  own  amusement  at  Bressuire  in  1793, 


when  the  rueful  masters  of  the  situation 
complained  to  her  that  they  had  no 
money  to  buy  tobacco,  it  never  having 
occurred  to  them  to  seize  it  in  the 
shops !  It  is  clear  that  persons  who  so 
scrupled  to  appropriate  the  goods  the 
gods  provided,  were  not  destined  easily 
to  become  experts  in  wanton  slaughter, 
which  relieved  no  need  of  their  honest 
stomachs.  The  Republicans  began  their 
business  at  once  with  the  master-stroke 
of  homicide,  and  forecasted  the  immortal 
axiom  of  De  Quincey,  that  when  once  a 
man  indulges  in  murder  he  soon  gets  to 
think  little  of  robbing  and  lying,  of  drink- 
ing and  Sabbath-breaking,  and  even  of 
incivility  and  procrastination.  But  in 
La  Vendee  they  had  a  breed  of  misgiv- 
ing hearts.  Marigny,  indeed,  mild  and 
brotherly  towards  his  own,  was  as  a  de- 
mon towards  his  foes ;  Charette,  the  very 
Charette  who  had  put  a  stop  to  the 
cruelties  of   Souchu   at   the  beginning, 


was,  with  D'Elbee,  the  first  to  sanction 
reprisals.  But  Cathelineau,  Bonchamp, 
Lescure,  La  Rochejaquelein  and  priests 
innumerable  stood  then,  and  stand  al- 
ways, ranged  on  the  side  of  Christ-like 
charity. 

To  any  student  of  the  great  Revolu- 
tion not  much  need  be  said  of  the  un- 
equal exchange  of  grim  attentions.  The 
Blues  outdid  themselves  on  Vendean 
territory.  Arrest,  with  them,  meant  an 
immediate  commission  to  explore  the 
spheres.  The  burials  alive  at  Clisson, 
the  holocaust  at  Vezins,  the  atrocities 
in  the  wood  of  Blanche  Couronne,  the 
week-long  fusillade  at  Savena3^  West- 
ermann's  thousands  shot  at  Angers,  Car- 
rier's drowned  at  Nantes,  the  hellish  pol- 
icy of  Commaire,  Crignon,  Amey,  Du- 
four — these  were  the  things  which  crazed 
the  gentler  rebels  until  they,  too,  learned 
to  throw  forgiveness  by,  as  a  coin  hollow 
and  vile.     In  May  of  1794,  Vimeux,  then 


in  command,  went  to  lay  their  country 
waste.  Only  Victor  Hugo's  pen  could 
fitly  portray  the  results.  The  Convention 
desired  report  of  a  landscape  without  a 
man,  without  a  house,  without  a  tree  ;  in 
due  season  they  had  it,  true  to  the  letter. 
It  was  Westermann's  boast  to  the  Com- 
mittee of  Public  Safety  that  he  had 
crushed  the  children  under  the  horses' 
hoofs,  and  massacred  the  women,  who 
should  bring  forth  no  more  "brigands;" 
that  not  a  prisoner  could  be  laid  to  his 
charge,  for  he  had  exterminated  them ; 
that  La  Vendee  was  heaped,  like  the 
pyramids,  with  bodies.  At  Rennes  the 
children  were  made  to  fire  upon  their 
parents :  it  was  a  novel,  awkward,  and 
lengthy  proceeding,  entirely  to  the  minds 
of  its  originators.  At  Savenay,  hundreds 
were  lured  under  cover  by  a  promise  of 
amnesty,  and  as  they  entered,  they  were 
shot  down.  An  adjutant  was  brought 
to   La   Rochejaquelein,  during  the  last 


124 

days  of  his  life,  in  whose  pocket  was  an 
order  to  repeat  this  briUiant  joke.  Dur- 
ing that  January,  also,  at  Barbastre,  fifteen 
hundred  insurgents  capitulated,  and  were 
cheated  in  the  same  way.  What  wonder 
if,  outside  Laval,  with  horror  on  horror 
bruited  in  their  ears,  the  peasants  de- 
stroyed a  whole  battalion  of  Mayence 
men  who  were  laying  down  their  arms  ? 
But  after,  marching  on  Angers  from  An- 
train,  they  sent  to  Rennes  one  hundred 
and  fifty  prisoners,  with  the  significant 
message  that  this  was  the  sort  of  ven- 
geance taken  by  choice  for  old  injuries. 
It  was  the  work  of  the  kindly  incumbent 
of  Sainte-Marie-de-Rhe.  On  the  morn- 
ing of  this  release,  Monsieur  de  Hargues, 
for  whom  Henri  (who  had  once  a  hot 
quarrel  with  him)  interceded  passion- 
ately, mounted  the  scaffold.  For  the 
bitter  deeds  of  Souchu  at  Machecould 
the  army  did  voluntary  penance.  Until 
it  was  practically  disorganized,  it   did 


125 

not  sin  in  the  same  way  again.  We 
are  aware  how  pretty  a  burlesque  be- 
tween nominal  captor  and  captives  came 
off  at  Bressuire.  And  in  Thouars,  Fon- 
tenay,  and  many  towns  like  them,  inhab- 
ited by  Republicans  and  revolutionists 
who  trembled  for  their  fate,  no  violence 
whatever  was  wreaked. 

A  truly  humorous  retaliation  was  made, 
at  the  suggestion  of  the  Marquis  of  Don- 
nissan,  at  Fontenay.  There  were  four 
thousand  prisoners,  and  no  forts  nor 
cells  to  hold  them.  Should  they  be  loosed 
they  could  not  be  trusted  on  parole. 
(What  a  thing  for  Frenchmen  to  know 
of  Frenchmen  !)  To  solve  the  difficulty 
their  heads  were  shaved,  so  that  if  during 
the  following  weeks  they  again  attempt- 
ed to  fight,  they  might  be  caught  and 
punished.  The  wild  barbers  had  infinite 
entertainment  out  of  this  circumstance. 
La  Rochejaquelein's  clemency  was  a 
proverb.      He  waived  the  very  show  of 


126 

superiority,  as  when,  at  Bois-Grolleau, 
he  made  Tribert  keep  his  preferred 
sword.  As  one  who  had  accepted  be- 
forehand the  painfulest  surprises  of 
fate,  he  heard  of  the  destruction  of  La 
DurbelHere  without  a  sigh.  Precisely 
the  same  danger  which  proved  fatal  to 
him,  having  rehearsed  itself  before  him 
early  in  his  career,  and  the  pistol  having 
missed  fire,  the  marksman  flung  himself 
at  his  feet,  crying  out  that  he  could  now 
have  his  satisfaction.  "  That  is  to  let 
thee  live,"  was  the  Alexander-like  reply, 
made  over  and  over  to  those  who  thus 
fell  into  his  power.  He  was  destined  to 
perish  through  his  belief  in  the  honor  of 
others.  The  best  acknowledgment  of 
the  influence  which  he  had  upon  his 
headstrong  band,  was  that  although 
they  slew,  in  his  absence,  the  Republic- 
an officer  who  led  the  first  raid  upon  his 
homestead,  yet,  when  he  was  murdered 
by  the  hand  of  one  of  the  two  grena- 


diers,  they  spared  the  man  who  had  not 
fired,  because  he  had  been  offered  mer- 
cy in  Henri's  last  spoken  word.  The 
Marigny,  who  bore  to  his  imminent 
misfortune  the  surname  of  an  active 
Royalist,  was  so  charmed  with  the  spir- 
ited behavior  of  Richard  Duplessis,  made 
captive  at  the  siege  of  Angers,  that  he 
sent  him  back  under  escort  to  his  own 
lines.  La  Rochejaquelein,  never  to  be 
outdone  in  a  handsome  service,  instantly 
freed  two  dragoons,  with  their  arms, 
thanking  him,  and  offering  him,  in  the 
future,  an  exchange  of  any  two  prisoners 
for  his  one.  "  This  was  the  only  Repub- 
lican general,"  adds  Madame  de  Lescure, 
"who  had  been  wont  to  show  us  any 
humanity  :  he  was  killed  that  very  day." 
Marceau  and  Quetineau,  both  scrupu- 
lously fair,  deserve  to  share  this  mention 
of  Bouin  de  Marigny.  And  to  Kleber 
and  Hoche,  the  knightliest  of  foemen, 
no  acknowledgment  would  be  too  great. 


128 

Lescure  himself  was  the  consummate 
type  of  the  early  Christian  :  so  tolerant, 
so  self-controlling,  that  to  be  able  to  im- 
pute one  vicious  deed  to  him  would  be 
a  gratification.  "  The  Saint  of  Poitou," 
however,  was  once  known  to  swear 
steadily  for  several  minutes.  An  enemy, 
in  action,  having  cocked  a  pistol  within 
a  rod  of  his  menaced  head,  Lescure,  fear- 
less and  quick,  dislodged  the  barrel  with 
a  swing  of  his  sword,  and  told  the  aston- 
ished invader  to  go  free.  The  Poitevins 
behind  had  a  mind  of  their  own  on  the 
subject,  and  presently  cut  the  bold  Blue 
to  pieces.  When  the  general  learned 
how  he  had  been  obeyed,  his  rage  was 
something  to  be  remembered.  This  was 
the  aristocrat  who,  when  his  ancestral 
halls  were  razed  to  the  ground,  would 
not  burn  Parthenay,  which  he  had  taken, 
not  only  lest  it  should  be,  on  his  part,  a 
revenge  for  Clisson,  but  lest,  being  a  pre- 
caution  merely,  it  should    disedify  by 


having  the  look  of  a  revenge  !  And  it  is 
a  curious  instance  of  the  "governance  of 
blood  "  in  his  most  lovely  character,  that 
although  he  was  invariabh^  in  the  thick- 
est of  the  fight,  his  hand  inflicted  no 
wilful  wound  throughout  the  war,  and 
that  to  his  personal  interference  no  fewer 
than  twenty  thousand  owed  their  lives. 
Again,  at  the  crossing  of  the  Loire,  in  an 
hour  of  unexampled  perplexity,  between 
five  and  six  thousand  captives  were  in  the 
hands  of  the  migrating  army,  and  shut 
in  the  Benedictine  Abbey  church,  which 
still  tops  the  crescent-shaped  heights  of 
Saint  Florent-le-Vieil.  There  could  be  no 
question  of  transporting  them  ;  the  simp- 
lest expedient  was  to  destroy  them.  Nor 
was  this  proposal  made  in  cold  blood, 
for  the  Marquis  of  Bonchamp  was  dying 
young  from  the  last  of  many  wounds, 
"  for  the  sacred  cause  of  the  lilies,"  and 
his  troops  were  in  a  frenzy  of  excitement 
and  grief.    Not  an  officer  could  be  found 


I30 

to  give  the  revolting  order.  The  men 
had  the  guns  already  pointed  at  the 
doors,  and  the  slaughter  was  about  to 
begin,  when  Boncharap,  apprised  of 
what  was  pending,  with  his  last  breath 
commanded,  as  he  had  done  before  at 
Pallet,  that  the  Blues  should  be  spared. 
From  the  house  where  he  lay  the  echo 
rolled  along  the  crowd  :  "  Quarter  for 
the  prisoners ;  quarter !  It  is  Bon- 
champ's  order  I"  They  were  delivered. 
With  the  genuine  Gallic  sense  of  the 
apportioning  of  things,  Bonchamp's  gra- 
cious valedictory  is  inscribed  upon  his 
tomb,  lifting  its  glorious  outlines  to-day 
in  the  transept  of  that  very  church,  and 
bearing,  in  a  free-will  offering,  the  name 
of  the  sculptor,  David  d'Angers,  whose 
father  was  among  the  ransomed  soldiery. 
As  to  the  amnesty,  the  Convention, 
guided  by  the  advice  of  jNIerlin  de  Thion- 
ville,  growled  over  it.  "  Freemen  accept 
their  lives  from  slaves  !    'Tis  against  the 


spirit  of  tlie  Revolution.  .  .  .  Consign 
the  unfortunate  affair  to  oblivion." 
There  was  different  speech  in  the  Tem- 
ple. "  Capet !"  said  the  brute  Simon  to 
the  wretched  little  King,  when  the  news 
came  of  the  crossing  of  the  Loire,  "  if  the 
Vendeans  deliver  you,  what  will  you  do 
first }"  "  Forgive  you  !"  replied  the  child. 
La  Vendee,  forbearing  wrong,  and  seek- 
ing after  righteousness,  has  no  mean 
martyrology.  What  people  in  the  mod- 
ern world  so  sweetly  rival  the  holy  race 
of  whom  it  is  said  in  the  Pharsalia  that 
they  hurried  on  their  own  extermination, 
and,  brimming  with  life,  spilled  it  as  a 
libation  to  the  gods.^  But  since  these 
others  were  not  pagan,  there  is  a  yet 
more  endearing  and  more  becoming 
word  :  "^-Eterna  fac  cu7n  Sanctis  tuis  in 
gloria  niimerari  r 


^ 


f 


T  is  a  brief  and  moving  story, 
and  it  is  over.  Small  com- 
ment is  to  be  made  at  any- 
time, on  promise  cut  short, 
on  the  burning  of  Apollo's 
laurel  -  bough.  La  Rochejaquelein  of 
Poitou,  with  his  goodness,  genius,  health, 
breeding,  wealth,  and  beauty  —  who  in 
his  day  would  have  measured  for  him 
the  renown  which  seemed  so  nigh  and 
so  wide  ?  And  the  first  reward  of  that 
fine  heart  and  brain  was  a  wild  grave  in 
the  grassy  trenches  with  the  assassin ; 
no  dues,  no  amends,  no  appeal,  beyond 
that  piteous  ending.  He  was  a  boy,  rash 
and  romantic,  as  boys  are,  and  so  pyro- 
technically  French  that  some  must  smile 
at  him.     His  chivalry  went  to  the  up- 


133 

holding  of  kings ;  all  he  did  has  a  sole 
value  of  loyalty,  and  the  application  of 
it  is  open  to  dispute.  But  his  spirit,  dis- 
entangled from  old  circumstances  of 
action,  is  that  which  helps  humanity 
towards  the  dawn,  and  sets  oppressions 
aside  with  bad  by-gone  dreams  ;  a  spirit 
infinitely  suggestive  and  generative,  then 
and  now  a  durable  sign  of  hope. 

It  is  diflficult  to  account  for  the  halo 
which  gathers  about  such  heads,  and 
stays,  to  make  of  a  sometime  aimless 
intelligence  a  vision  of  extreme  force 
and  charm  to  the  youth  of  his  own 
land.  Nor  ought  we  try  to  account 
for  it.  Henri  de  La  Rochejacquelein  is 
one  with  whom  statistics  and  theories 
have  distant  dealings.  He  is  a  fond  in- 
congruity, a  compliment  to  human  nat- 
ure almost  as  great  as  it  can  bear.  He 
has  precisely  the  look,  language,  and 
physical  radiance  of  the  demigods :  we 
infer   how,  from   his    counterparts,  the 


134 

early  myths  grew.  Wherever  there  is  a 
liberal  air,  and  discipline,  behold,  the 
demigods  are  again ;  and  the  senses  no 
longer  boggle  at  them.  They  rise  often, 
and  repeat  one  another,*  preaching  affir- 
mation, and  inclining  us  to  allow  that 
what  Greece  and  Japan  have  had,  Eng- 
land has,  Alaska  and  the  Congo  shall 
have.  Stress  must  be  laid  upon  heroes : 
they  are  the  universal  premise.  Like 
Emerson's  stars,  they  "  light  the  world 
with  their  admonishing  smile ;"  they 
warn  us,  if  we  will  not  adore,  at  least  not 
to  deny  that  they  shine  forever. 

Among  Henri  de  La  Rochejacquelein's 
peers  there  were  those  who  would  have 
been  men  of  weight  and  of  mark  in  any 
career.  But  perhaps  he,  more  sensitive 
and  solitary,  had  no  such  adaptabilities 
to  bear  him  out.  He  was  not  twenty- 
two  when  the  dark  curtain  was  rung 
down  upon  him.  To  regret  it,  is  to  show 
small  appreciation  of  the  masterly  con- 


135 

sistency  which  Fate  sometimes  allows 
herself.  No  spectator  of  the  little  drama 
enacted  within  the  Revolution  can  for- 
get how  dominant,  distinct,  unrepeated, 
this  artful  image  of  Henri  burns  itself  in 
upon  the  memory.  To  wish  him  age 
and  a  competency  were  superstition. 
Mark  how,  even  in  her  hasty  finishing 
touches,  Nature  did  not  bungle  with 
him.  She  rounds  out  her  white  ideal. 
She  leaves  us  convinced  that  living  a 
span,  and  dying  in  the  hurly-burly,  he 
best  fulfilled  himself.  He  is  placed  in 
an  allotted  light  perfectly  kind  to  him, 
perfectly  soft  and  clear  to  the  looker-on. 
Virtually,  what  did  he  amount  to? 
What  testimony  of  him  is  left  ?  To  the 
man  of  facts,  who  asks  the  questions, 
the  answers  are :  Nothing  and  None. 
There  is  a  laconic  apology  in  the  Spanish 
Gypsy: 

"The  greatest  gift  the  hero  leaves  his  race 
Is  to  have  been  a  hero." 


136 

Such  a  one  makes  a  jest  of  values ;  he 
has  the  freedom  of  every  city ;  he  need 
pay  no  taxes  ;  he  cripples  criticism ;  he 
can  do  without  a  character ;  theology 
itself  will  not  exact  faith  and  good  works 
from  him.  This  Henri  lived  with  his 
whole  soul.  His  interest  to  us  now  is 
that  he  blazed  with  genuine  fire,  and 
played  no  tricks  with  his  individuality. 
Among  the  serious  war-worn  leaders  of 
the  insurrection  he  stands,  a  fairy  prince, 
with  a  bright  absurd  glamour.  Never 
was  anybody  more  like  the  fiction  of  an 
artist's  brain.  He  is  all  that  children 
look  for  in  a  tale,  and  he  has  no  moral. 
He  is  the  embodiment  of  "  V inexplicable 
Vendee  J' 

He  was  made  to  despatch  this  world, 
like  an  errand  or  a  game.  He  had  no 
sovereign  interests  here  of  his  own ; 
rather  was  he  his  brother's  keeper.  A 
sort  of  rich  unreason  shot  him  past  the 
work,  the  musing,  the  sight -seeing  for 


I 


self,  and  the  pleasant  banquets  over 
which  men  linger.  Careless  for  the 
making  of  a  name,  for  the  gain  of  expe- 
rience, even  for  the  duty  of  prolonging 
his  usefulness,  he  chose  the  first  course 
which  he  believed  honorable,  and  to 
which  he  could  give  his  heart ;  and  so 
stumbled  on  death.  The  war  had  a 
thousand  sanctions  in  his  eyes.  His 
enlisting  was  honest  and  humble.  If 
he  flashed  into  the  most  unexampled 
comet-like  activity  before  he  had  been 
long  apprenticed,  it  was  merely  that  he 
warmed  with  the  motion,  that  he  felt 
sure  at  last  of  himself,  and  so  blazoned 
abroad  his  content  and  comprehension 
of  life.  He  is  less  flesh  and  blood  than 
a  magnificent  quibble  for  all  the  phil- 
osophies of  the  cold  schools.  He  repre- 
sents, in  the  economy  of  things,  the 
waste  which  is  thrift,  the  daring  which  is 
prudence,  the  folly  which  is  wisdom  in- 
effable. 


138 

Despite  the  white  heat  of  enthusiasm, 
which  is  apt  to  singe  the  susceptibiHties 
of  others,  his,  at  least,  was  a  modest, 
merry,  and  balanced  mind.  Ranked  as 
he  will  be  always  with  his  Cathelineau, 
Bonchamp,  and  Lescure,  he  differs  sharp- 
ly from  them  :  that  is,  he  was  farther 
from  a  saint  or  a  conventional  hero. 
None  the  less  is  he  a  type  of  young 
French  manhood  ere  it  had  grown 
wholly  modern  and  complex ;  the  last 
of  a  single-minded  race,  soldiers  by  ac- 
cident, helpers  and  servers  of  men  by 
choice.  In  short,  he  was  a  Vendean, 
behind  his  century  in  shrewdness,  ahead 
of  it  in  joy ;  a  straggler  from  the  pageant 
of  the  ancestral  crusaders,  having  all  the 
thirst  for  justice,  the  rational  gayety, 
the  boyish  bel  air  of  the  sworded  squires 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  A  phrase  meant 
for  Sidney  will  grace  him  :  "  God  hath 
disdeigned  the  worlde  of  this  most  noble 
Spirit."    Let  him  ride  ever  now  in  mem- 


ory,  a  beardless  knight  erect  upon  Fal- 
lowdeer,  his  white  scarf  around  him,  the 
nodding  cockade  of  his  foes  behind ; 
women  watching  his  lips  for  comfort  and 
assurance,  the  happy  Hermenee  prattling 
between  his  knees;  beautiful  indeed,  even 
in  the  smoke  of  war,  with  his  oval  face, 
his  hale  and  winning  aspect,  his  terse 
speech  and  candid  ways  :  not  the  Count 
nor  the  General  La  Rochejaquelein,  but 
"  Master  Henry,  a  hard  hitter  and  a  dear 
fellow,"  as  his  compatriots  knew  him, 
and  as  Froissart,  his  fittest  chronicler, 
might  have  loved  him. 


4f 


Re 


000  002  983 


